Q 

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HO'OL 

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Illlllllllllll 

)  OOO  OOLO  I^CDCD 

RUFUS  .CHOA'. 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


HARPER'S   SCHOOL   CLASSICS 

For  Supplementary  Reading. 

BIOGRAPHY. 

MACAULAY'S    ESSAYS. 

These  essays  were  all  written  in  the  vigor  of  life. 
They  were  short  enough  to  be  struck  off  at  a  heat. 
They  consequently  have  the  quality  of  exuberant  vig- 
or, high  spirits,  and  conscious  strength  which  delights 
in  exercise  and  rapid  motion  for  their  own  sake.  Like 
the  first  flight  of  the  falcon,  they  show  a  store  of  un- 
subdued energy. 

They  are  painted,  indeed,  with  such  freedom,  vivid- 
ness, and  power  that  they  may  be  said  to  enjoy  a  sort 
of  tacit  monopoly  of  the  periods  and  characters  to 
which  they  refer,  in  the  estimation,  of  the  general 
public. 

How  many  persons,  outside  the  class  of  professed 
students,  know  much  of  Lord  Chatham,  Lord  Clive, 
Warren  Hastings,  and  many  more,  beyond  what  they 
learn  from  the  essays  of  Macaulay.— -J.  Cotter  Mori- 
son's  Life  of  Macaulay,  in  Hurley's  "English  Men  of 
Letters  Series." 

WARREN  HASTINGS.    By  LORD  MACAULAY. 

Giving  the  author's  own  view  of  the  life  and  char- 
acter of  Mr.  Hastings,  pp.  179. 

THE   LIFE  AND  WRITINGS  OF  ADDISON. 

By  LORD  MACAULAY. 

Keviewing  the  life  and  works  of  Addison.  "The  un- 
sullied statesman,  the  accomplished  scholar,  the  mas- 
ter of  pure  English  eloquence,  the  consummate  paint- 
er of  life  and  manners."  pp.  127. 

LORD   CLIVE.     By  LORD  MACAULAY. 

"The  name  of  Lord  Clive  stands  high  on  the  roll 
of  conquerors.  But  it  is  found  in  a  better  list — in  the 


Harper's  School  Classics. 

list  of  those  who  have  done  and  suffered  much  for  the 
happiness  of  mankind."    pp.  130. 

FREDERIC  THE  GREAT.    By  LORD  MACAULAY. 

"A  sketch  of  the  life  of  the  greatest  king  that  has, 
in  modern  times,  succeeded  by  right  of  birth  to  a 
throne."  pp.125. 

THE   EARL   OF   CHATHAM.      By  LORD  MA- 
CAULAY. 

Giving  the  author's  view  of  the  life  and  character 
of  the  Right  Honorable  William  Pitt,  Earl  of  Chat- 
ham, pp.  204. 

WILLIAM  PITT.     By  LORD  MACAULAY. 

An  essay  on  the  life  and  character  of  William  Pitt, 
the  second  son  of  William  Pitt,  Earl  of  Chatham,  pp. 
102. 

SAMUEL   JOHXSOX,  LL.D.     By  LORD  MACAU- 
LAY. 

An  essay  on  the  life  and  character  of  Samuel  John- 
son, giving  much  interesting  information  of  his  con- 
temporaries as  well  as  of  himself,  pp.  135. 

JOHX   HAMPDEX— LORD   BURLEIGII.      By 

LORD  MACAULAY. 

These  two  essays  are  suggested  respectively  by  the 
two  volumes:  John  Hanipden  —  his  Party  and  his 
Times,  by  Lord  Nugent,  and  Burleigh  and  his  Times, 
by  Rev.  Edward  Nares.  pp.  133. 

SIR  WILLIAM  TEMPLE.  By  LORD  MACAULAY. 
"If  one  wanted  to  give  an  intelligent  foreign  critic 
a  good  specimen  of  Macanlay— a  specimen  in  which 
most  of  his  merits  and  fewest  of  his  faults  are  collect- 
ed in  a  small  compass — one  could  not  do  better  than 
give  him  the  article  on  Sir  William  Temple.'1— Mori- 
sou's  Life  of  Macaulay.  pp.  143. 


Harper's  School  Classics. 


MACHIAVELLI— HORACE  WALPOLE.  By 
LORD  MACAULAY. 

Two  essays  written  in  the  author's  best  vein.  The 
characterization  of  Machiuvelli  is  especially  to  be  com- 
mended to  the  student. 

JOHN  MILTON  — LORD  BYRON.  By  LORD 
MACAULAY. 

Giving  the  author's  view  of  the  lives  and  characters 
of  two  of  the  great  lights  of  English  literature,  pp. 
136. 

OLIVER  GOLDSMITH  — JOHN  BUNYAN— • 
MADAME  D'ARBLAY.  By  LORD  MACAULAY. 
After  a  brief  characterization  of  Goldsmith  and 

Banyan,  the  author  devotes  the  last  eighty-five  pages 

to  a  consideration  of  the  life  and  letters  of  Madame 

D'Arblay.    pp.  139. 

LORD   BACON.     By  LORD  MACAULAY. 

An  essay  on  the  life  and  character  of  Lord  Bacon, 
pp.  198. 


THACKERAY'S 
ENGLISH  HUMORISTS. 

From  "  Lectures  on  the  English  Humorists."  In 
Two  Volumes.  By  W.  M.  THACKERAY. 

SWIFT  ;  CONCRETE,  and  ADDISON  ;  STEELE.  With 
Copious  Notes,  pp.  209. 

PRIOR,  GAY,  and  POPE  ;  HOGARTH,  SMOLLETT,  and 
FIELDING;  STERNE,  and  GOLDSMITH.  With  Copi- 
ous Notes,  pp.  214. 


Harper**  School  Classics. 


BY  OTHER  AUTHORS. 

PETER  THE  GREAT.  By  JOHN  LOTHROP  MOT- 
LEY. Author  of  "  The  Dutch  Republic,"  etc. 
Giving  a  brief  account  of  the  life  and  character  of 

Peter  the  Great,    pp.  106. 

RUFUS  CHOATE.     By  EDWIN  P.  WHIPPLE. 

Giving  some  personal  recollections  of  the  author, 
of  the  great  American  lawyer,  statesman,  and  orator, 
pp.  100. 

GASPARB  DE  COLIGXY  (Marquis  de  Chatillon), 
Admiral  of  France.  By  WALTER  BESANT,  M.A. 
An  endeavor  to  present  faithfully  the  record  of  his 

life.    "  Other  great  men  adorned  that  age  of  struggle 

and  upheaval— he  overshadows  them  all."— Author's 

Preface,    pp.  224. 

LIFE  OF  CHARLEMAGNE.  By  EGINHARD. 
Translated  from  the  text  of  "  Monumenta 
Germanise."  By  SAMUEL  EPES  TURNER,  A.M. 
With  Xotes  and  a  Map.  pp.  82. 

OLIVER  CROMWELL.  The  Life,  Times,  and 
Character  of  Oliver  Cromwell.  By  the  Rt. 

Hon.  E.  H.   KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN,  M.P.      pp. 

108. 

Special  terms  for  introduction. 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  Publishers, 
Franklin  Square,  New  York. 


SOME  RECOLLECTIONS 


RUFUS  CHOATE 


EDWIN  P.  WHIPPLE 


NEW  YORK 

HARPER    &    BROTHERS,   PUBLISHERS 
FRANKLIN    SQUARE 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1878,  by 

HARPER  &  BROTIIEKS, 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


SOME  RECOLLECTIONS 

OP 

RUFUS     CHOATE. 


RUFUS  CHOATE  enjoys  a  peculiar  and  ex- 
ceptional fame  among  American  lawyers, 
statesmen,  and  orators,  because  of  his  un- 
likeness  to  any  of  his  celebrated  contem- 
poraries. One  of  his  friends  bluntly  re- 
marked, "  Webster  is  like  other  folks,  only 
there  is  more  of  him ;  but  as  to  Choate,  who 
evej  saw  or  knew  //  is  like  ?!J  He  not  only 
idealized  but  individualized  every  thing  he 
touched,  and  the  driest  law  case,  when  he 
was  one  of  the  counsel  engaged,  was  con- 
verted into  a  thrilling  tragedy  or  tragi- 
comedy founded  on  an  actual  event.  He 
was  a  poet  at  the  heart  of  his  nature,  and 
instinctively  gave  a  dramatic  or  epical  char- 
acter to  the  leading  persons  concerned  in  a 
jury  trial.  '  It  was  once  common  for  legal 
pedants,  possessed  of  learning  minus  genius, 
to  denounce  as  "  flummery"  the  arguments 
of  this  advocate,  who  possessed  learning 


50802 


8  SOME   RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

jpfaa  genius;  but  it  is  now  universally  con- 
ceded that  he  was  profound  in  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  law,  that  he  was  both  an  acute 
and  comprehensive  reasouer,  and  that  his 
practical  sagacity  in  the  conduct  of  a  case 
was  as  marked  as  the  romantic  interest  with 
which  he  invested  it.  It  is  to  be  feared, 
however,  that  this  shining  ornament  of  the 
legal  profession  will  be  hereafter  known 
chiefly  by  the  traditions  of  his  splendid  suc- 
cesses. My  purpose  is  simply  to  record  a 
few  memories  illustrating  the  force  and  flex- 
ibility of  his  genius  and  the  geniality  of  his 
nature. 

My  admiration  of  Mr.  Choate  was  formed 
a  long  time  before  I  had  the  honor  and  pleas- 
ure of  making  his  acquaintance.  At  the  pe- 
riod when  he  was  a  young  lawyer, practicing 
in  the  courts  of  Essex  County,  he  "pervad- 
ed"— if  I  may  use  one  of  his  own  terms — 
the  Salem  bookstores  in  his  leisure  hours. 
He  was  specially  attracted  to  the  store  of 
Mr.  John  M.  Ives,  and  he  never  entered  it 
without  falling  into  conversation  with  some 
legal  or  illegal  brother  interested  in  letters, 
and  he  never  left  it  without  leaving  in  the 
memory  of  those  who  listened  some  one  of 
the  golden  sentences  which  dropped  as  nat- 
urally from  his  mouth  as  pearls  from  the 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  9 

lips  of  the  failed  fairy.  There  was  a  cir- 
culating library  connected  with  Mr.  Ives's 
bookstore,  and  I  have  a  vivid  remembrance 
when,  as  a  boy,  I  was  prowling  among  the 
books  on  the  shelves,  suspending  my  decis- 
ion as  to  taking  out  a  novel  of  Richardson, 
or  Fielding,  or  Miss  Porter,  or  Scott,  of  list- 
ening, with  a  certain  guilty  delight,  at  the 
chaffing  going  on  among  my  elders  and  bet- 
ters in  the  front  store.  I  remember  perfect- 
ly how  I  was  impressed  and  fascinated  by 
the  appearance  of  Mr.  Choate.  He  was  not 
a  Thaddeus  of  Warsaw,  or  a  hero  of  the 
type  which  Mrs.  Radcliffe  had  stamped  on 
my  imagination ;  but  there  was  something 
strange,  something  "  Oriental,"  in  him  which 
suggested  the  Arabian  Nights.  In  after- 
years  I  wondered,  as  I  wondered  then,  that 
such  a  remarkable  creature  should  have 
dropped  down,  as  it  were,  into  Essex  Coun- 
ty, There  seemed  to  be  no  connection  be- 
tween the  man  and  his  environment.  He 
flashed  his  meaning  in  pointed  phrase  while 
his  interlocutors  were  arraying  facts  and 
preparing  arguments,  and  darted  out  of  the 
store  with  a  ringing  laugh  before  they  had 
time  to  send  a  cross-bow  shaft  in  reply,  or 
retort  to  the  Parthian  arrow  he  had  gayly 
sped  at  parting. 
A* 


10  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

Boy  as  I  was,  I  learned  then  what  was 
characteristic  of  Mr.  Choate  through  life — 
his  horror  of  commonplace.  Why,  he  seem- 
ed to  say,  argue  about  a  thing  which  an  in- 
telligent human  being  should  detect  at  the 
first  glance  ?  He  always  tried  to  evade 
bores,  in  youth  as  in  age ;  and  to  him  the 
most  dreadful  of  bores  were  well-meaning 
men,  deficient  in  quickness  of  apprehension 
and  directness  of  insight,  who  were  fond  of 
exercising  their  powers  of  disputation  in 
the  weary  work  of  placing  on  a  logical 
foundation  the  indisputable.  Godwin  once 
mentioned  to  Coleridge  that  he  and  Mack- 
intosh had  been  engaged  for  three  hours  in 
an  argument  without  arriving  at  a  definite 
conclusion.  "If  there  had  been  a  man  of 
genius  in  the  room,"  Coleridge  retorted,  "  he 
would  have  settled  the  question  in  five  min- 
utes." Choate  had  this  impatience  of  a  man 
of  genius  with  long-winded  controversies. 

I  may  add  that,  in  my  boyish  remem- 
brances, the  beauty  of  Choate's  face  and 
person  early  caught  my  fancy.  He  was  an 
Apollo,  though,  as  he  walked  the  streets  of 
Salem,  he  was  an  Apollo  with  a  slouch.  He 
had  a  way  of  lifting  his  shoulders,  and  an 
angular  swinging  of  his  frame,  which  were 
as  individual  as  they  were  inartistic.  Yet 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  11 

ho  was,  on  the  whole,  the  most  beautiful 
young  rnaii  I  ever  saw.  Thought,  study, 
care,  the  contentions  of  the  bar,  the  wear 
and  tear  of  an  unreposing  life,  at  last  broke 
up  the  smoothest  and  comeliest  of  human 
faces  into  weird  wrinkles,  which  he  often 
laughed  at  himself  when  he  surveyed  his 
countenance  as  depicted  by  the  photogra- 
pher. Of  one  of  these  likenesses,  in  which 
the  sun  had  not  spared  a  single  thought- 
ploughed  mark,  he  said,  "  It  is  as  ugly  as 
the  devil ;  but  still  I  must  admit  it  is  like — 
very  like."  Yet  in  his  youth  that  face  al- 
most realized  the  ideal  of  manly  beauty. 
His  complexion  was  brown,  but  health  in- 
fused into  it  a  faint  red  tint  which  made  it 
singularly  charming  to  the  eye.  I  recollect 
as  if  it  were  yesterday  one  Sunday  after- 
noon when  he  entered  Dr.  Brazer's  church 
in  Salem  just  before  the  services  began. 
He  marched  up  the  aisle — I  can  hit  on  no 
better  expression  than  "marched" — and  en- 
tered a  pew  just  above  that  in  which  I  was 
seated.  The  sermon  was  no  doubt  good — 
as  all  the  sermons  of  Dr.  Brazer  were  good — 
but  my  attention  was  fixed  on  Choate.  For 
an  hour  I  watched  his  expressive  face,  no- 
ticing every  variation  of  its  lines,  as  they  in- 
dicated agreement  or  disagreement  with  the 


12  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

eloquent  clergyman's  Unitarian  discourse; 
and  all  I  knew  of  the  sermon  was  gathered 
from  what  I  considered  its  effect  on  the  won- 
derful creature  who  seemed  to  my  boyish 
imagination  to  have  strayed  into  the  pew 
from  some  region  altogether  apart  from 
any  civilization  heretofore  known  to  Salem. 
There  was  something  mysterious  about  him. 
In  glancing  over  the  other  pews,  occupied 
by  the  merchant  aristocracy  of  the  town,  I 
was  struck  by  their  commonplace  character, 
as  contrasted  with  this  stranger,  who  ap- 
peared to  belong  to  another  race,  and  who 
might,  for  all  I  knew,  have  been  imported 
by  these  merchants  from  Calcutta  or  Singa- 
pore, bringing  with  him  the  suggestion  of 

"Gums  of  Paradise  and  Eastern  air." 

He  was  then  in  the  perfection  of  his  man- 
ly beauty — the  beauty  of  robust  physical 
health  combined  with  that  indefinable  beau- 
ty which  comes  from  the  palpable  presence 
of  intellect  and  genius  in  brow,  cheek,  eye, 
lip,  and  the  very  pose  of  the  head.  I  was 
then  about  ten  years  old ;  but  the  kind  of 
admiring  wonder  I  then  felt  in  looking  at 
him  affected  me,  many  years  afterward, 
when  I  had  made  his  personal  acquaintance. 
There  was  always  in  him  something  "rich 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  13 

and  strange,"  something  foreign  to  our  New 
England  "notions,"  something  which  dis- 
tinguished him  from  all  other  eminent  Amer- 
icans. A  humorous  friend  of  mine  once  de- 
clared that  he  was  originally  intended  for  an 
inhabitant  of  Jupiter,  hut  the  earth  caught 
him  in  his  passage  and  hauled  him  in.  Mr. 
Choate,  in  some  such  way,  always  seemed 
to  me  to  have  been  arrested  by  the  inso- 
lent gravitating  power  lodged  in  the  earth, 
and  drawn  violently  into  our  prosaic  New 
England  while  he  was  joyously  speeding  on 
to  his  appropriate  home  in  some  distant 
Mars  or  Jupiter. 

As  regards  Mr.  Choate's  whole  nature,  I 
was  impressed  not  so  much  by  any  partic- 
ular faculty  as  by  its  central  force.  He 
was  fundamentally  strong  at  the  heart  of 
his  nature — strong  ill  personality,  strong  in 
will,  strong  in  mental  manhood ;  and  he 
used  his  rare  powers  not  merely  to  please, 
persuade,  astonish,  and  convince  those  whom 
he  addressed,  but  to  overcome  them.  He 
must  have  been  personally  conscious  of  that 
grand  mood  which  Wordsworth  celebrates : 

"Such  animation  often  do  I  find, 
Power  in  my  breast,  winga  growing  in  my  mmd." 

In  his  diary,  July,  1844,  he  indicates  what 


14  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

he  considers  should  be  the  characteristics 
of  a  legislator's  speech.  These  are :  "  Truth 
for  the  staple,  good  taste  the  form,  persua- 
sion to  act,  for  the  end."  It  was  the  "per- 
suasion to  act"  that  was  always  in  his  mind, 
whether  he  addressed  a  popular  gathering, 
a  jury,  or  the  Senate  of  the  United  States. 

Indeed,  in  jury  trials  his  main  object  was 
to  influence  the  icills  of  the  twelve  men  be- 
fore him.  He  addressed  their  understand- 
ings ;  he  fascinated  their  imaginations ;  he 
stirred  their  feelings ;  but,  after  all,  he  used 
all  his  powers  in  subordination  to  that  one 
primal  power  which  dwelt  in  his  magnetic 
individuality,  by  which  he  subdued  them, 
bringing  on  that  part  of  their  being  which 
uttered  its  reluctant  "yes"  or  "no"  the  press- 
ure of  a  stronger  nature  as  well  as  of  a  lar- 
ger mind.  As  an  advocate,  he  thoroughly 
understood  that  men  in  the  aggregate  arc 
not  reasonable  beings,  but  men  with  the  ca- 
pacity of  being  occasionally  made  reasona- 
ble, if  their  prejudices  are  once  blown  away 
by  a  superior  force  of  blended  reason  and 
emotion — in  other  words,  by  force  of  being. 
His  triumphs  at  the  bar  were  due  to  the 
fact  that  he  was  a  powerful  man,  victorious 
over  other  men  because  he  had  a  stronger 
manhood,  a  stronger  selfhood,  than  uny 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  15 

body  on  the  jury  he  addressed.  On  one  oc- 
casion I  happened  to  be  a,  witness  in  a  case 
where  a  trader  was  prosecuted  for  obtain- 
ing goods  under  false  pretenses.  Mr.  Choate 
took  the  ground  that  the  seeming  knavery 
of  the  accused  was  due  to  the  circum- 
stance that  he  had  a  deficient  business 
intelligence — in  short,  that  he  unconscious- 
ly rated  all  his  geese  as  swans.  He  was 
right  in  his  view.  The  foreman  of  the 
jury,  however,  was  a  hard-headed  practi- 
cal man,  a  model  of  business  intellect  and 
integrity,  but  with  an  incapacity  of  under- 
standing any  intellect  or  conscience  radi- 
cally differing  from  his  own.  Mr.  Choate's 
argument,  as  far  as  the  facts  and  the  law 
were  concerned,  was  through  in  an  hour. 
Still  he  went  on  speaking.  Hour  after  hour 
passed,  and  yet  he  continued  to  speak  with 
constantly  increasing  eloquence,  repeating 
and  recapitulating,  without  any  seeming 
reason,  facts  which  he  had  already  stated 
and  arguments  which  he  had  already  urged. 
The  truth  was,  as  I  gradually  learned,  that 
he  was  engaged  in  a  hand-to-hand — or 
rather  in  a  brain-to-brain  and  a  heart-to- 
heart —  contest  with  the*  foreman,  whose 
resistance  he  was  determined  to  break 
down,  but  who  confronted  him  for  three 


16  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

hours  with  defiance  observable  in  every 
rigid  line  of  Lis  honest  countenance.  "  You 
fool!"  was  the  burden  of  the  advocate's  in- 
genious argument;  "you  rascal !"  was  the 
phrase  legibly  printed  on  the  foreman's  in- 
credulous face.  But  at  last  the  features 
of  the  foreman  began  to  relax,  and  at  the 
end  the  stern  lines  melted  into  acquiescence 
with  the  opinion  of  the  advocate,  who  had 
been  storming  at  the  defenses  of  his  mind, 
his  heart,  and  his  conscience  for  live  hours, 
and  had  now  entered  as  victor.  He  c«  m- 
pelled  the  foreman  to  admit  the  unpleasant 
fact  that  there  were  existing  human  beings 
whose  mental  and  moral  constitution  differ- 
ed from  his  own,  and  who  were  yet  as  hon- 
est in  intention  as  he  was,  but  lacked  his 
clear  perception  and  sound  judgment.  The 
verdict  was,  "Not  guilty."  It  was  a  just 
verdict,  but  it  was  mercilessly  assailed  by 
merchants  who  had  lost  money  by  the  pris- 
oner, and  who  were  hounding  him  down  as 
an  enemy  to  the  human  race,  as  another 
instance  of  Choate's  lack  of  mental  and 
moral  honesty  in  the  defense  of  persons  ac- 
cused of  crime.  The  fact  that  the  foreman 
of  the  jury  that  returned  the  verdict  be- 
longed to  the  class  that  most  vehemently 
attacked  Choate  was  sufficient  of  itself  to 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  1? 

disprove  such  allegations.  As  I  listened  to 
Choate's  argument  in  this  case,  I  felt  as- 
sured that  he  would  go  on  speaking  until 
he  dropped  dead  011  the  floor  rather  than 
have  relinquished  his  clutch  on  the  soul  of 
the  one  man  on  the  jury  whom  he  knew 
would  control  the  opinion  of  the  others. 

Mr.  Choate  was  well  aware  of  the  con- 
temptuous criticisms  made  on  the  peculiari- 
ties of  his  manner,  both  in  respect  to  elocu- 
tion and  rhetoric.  Having  within  himself 
the  proud  consciousness  of  unrecognized 
power,  he  notes  in  his  diary,  under  the  date 
of  September,  1844:  "If  I  live,  all  block- 
heads which  are  shaken  at  certain  mental 
peculiarities  shall  know  and  feel  a  reason er, 
a  lawyer,  and  a  man  of  business."  Now  as 
every  blockhead  is  still  entitled  to  the  claim 
of  being  "a  man  and  a  brother,"  there  is 
something  delicious  in  this  substitution  of 
"  which"  for  "  who"  in  referring  to  the  cere- 
monious and  pompous  blockheads  of  the  bar; 
for,  grammatically,  this  change  of  the  pro- 
noun reduces  them  from  the  dignity  of  per- 
sons into  "animals  and  inanimate  things." 

Mr.  Choate  of  course  possessed  the  art  of 

concealing  the  art  by  which  he  overcame 

opposition.     In  his  steady  pressure  on  the 

wills  of  the  jury  he  appeared  to  be  cozily 

B 


18  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

arguing  "with  them,  or  lifting  them  into  a 
region  of  impassioned  sentiment  and  imag- 
ination Avhere  he  was  at  home,  and  where 
the  jury  were  made  to  feel  that  they  shared 
with  him  all  the  delights  of  such  a  lofty 
communion  with  every  thing  beautiful  and 
sublime.  In  the-  celebrated  Tirrell  trial,  the 
inhabitants  of  Boston,  constituting  them- 
selves into  a  jury,  deciding  on  the  evidence 
presented  in  newspaper  reports,  had  de- 
clared that  the  accused  was  guilty  of  mur- 
der, and  should  be  hanged.  The  judgment 
of  the  most  eminent  representatives  of  the 
bench  and  the  bar  was  this — that  the  ver- 
dict of  "Not  guilty"  was  legally  right  and 
just.  But  the  jury  had  a  hard  time  of  it  when 
they  returned  to  their  usual  avocations,  as 
all  their  companions  and  friends  jeered  at 
them  for  being  take  j  in  by  Choate's  humbug. 
One  of  these  jurymen  defended  himself  by  a 
statement  which  has  survived  :  "  Oh !"  h6 
declared,  "we  didn't  care  a  sixpence  for 
that  stutf  about  som-nam-bulism ;  but  then, 
you  know,  we  couldn't  believe  the  testimony 
of  them  abandoned  women.  Now  could  we?" 
He  had  yielded  to  Choate  without  knowing 
it,  and  had  yielded  on  the  point  where  tho 
government's  case  was  defective — a  point 
which  Choate  had  specially  emphasized. 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  19 

During  Mr.  Choate's  contests  with  the 
leaders  of  the  Suffolk  bar  lie  was  once 
opposed  by  an  impudent  advocate  from 
another  State,  imported  specially  to  put 
him  down  by  sheer  force  of  assurance. 
Choate  described  him  as  perverting  the  law 
with  "  an  imperturbable  perpendicularity 
of  assertion"  which  it  was  difficult  to  upset. 
On  this  occasion  the  lawyer  closed  his  ar- 
gument with  the  remark  that  he  was  more 
confirmed  in  his  view  of  the  law  of  the  case 
because  the  distinguished  counsel  opposed 
to  him  had  taken  the  same  ground  in  an 
argument  a  few  days  before  at  Lowell.  In- 
stead of  denying  the  false  assertion,  which 
most  lawyers  would  have  done,  Choate  qui- 
etly replied,  "  Yes,  and  was  overruled  by  the 
Court."  It  seems  to  me  that  this  is  a  won- 
derful example  of  his  quickness  in  instantly 
deciding  on  the  right  way  of  meeting  before 
a  jury  a  seemingly  crushing  appeal  to  pop- 
ular prejudice. 

On  one  occasion  Mr.  Choate  was  called 
upon  to  defend  a  Roman  Catholic  priest 
who  was  accused  of  making  what  appeared 
to  be  the  first  approaches  of  a  criminal  as- 
sault on  a  girl  he  met  in  one  of  the  side 
streets  of  Boston.  The  advocate  took  what 
was  in  all  probability  the  true  view  of  the 


20  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

situation,  that  the  priest  was  returning  from 
his  church  absorbed  iii  his  devotions,  had 
accidentally  met  the  girl  in  his  path,  and 
that  the  abrupt  jostling  with  the  fair  pros- 
ecutor was  accidental.  But  the  case  was 
prosecuted  with  all  the  animosity  of  Prot- 
estant prejudice,  and  the  foreman  of  the 
jury  was  an  orthodox  deacon.  I  remember 
of  the  case  only  this  statement:  "I  have 
proved  to  you,  gentlemen,  that  this  collision 
was  purely  an  accident ;  such  an  accident, 
Mr.  Foreman,  as  might  have  happened  to 
you  or  to  me  returning  from  a  Union  meet- 
ing, or  a  liberty  meeting,  or  a  Jenny  Lind 
concert,  or,  what  is  infinitely  better,  a  monih- 
1y  concert  of  prayer."  If  solemni  ty  was  ever  im- 
aged in  a  human  countenance,  it  was  when 
Choate,  advancing  to  the  deacon,  brought 
his  sad,  weird,  wrinkled  face  into  close 
proximity  with  the  foreman's,  and  in  low, 
deep  tones  uttered  that  magical  form  of 
words  by  which  orthodox  Protestants  rec- 
ognize each  other  all  over  New  England — 
the  "monthly  concert  of  prayer."  I  think 
he  gained  his  case  by  that  happy  display 
of  sympathy  with  the  absorption  in  divine 
things  which  is  supposed  to  follow  such  a 
"concert"  in  all  Congregational  churches. 
In  one  of  Mr.  Choate's  contentions  at  the 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  21 

bar,  his  opponent,  a  man  distinguished  for 
his  high  moral  character,  took  it  into  his 
head  that  his  learned  brother  had  im- 
pugned his  honesty ;  and  he  made  a  fervid 
speech,  declaring  that  such  an  imputation, 
during  his  long  professional  career,  had  nev- 
er been  even  insinuated  before.  Mr.  Choate, 
preserving  his  admirable  composure,  dis- 
claimed any  such  imputation,  with  the  pre- 
liminary statement  that  he  was  quite  un- 
prepared "for  such  a  tempestuous  outbreak 
of  extraordinary  sensibility"  on  the  part 
of  his  friend.  His  power  of  constructing 
what  may  be  called  architectural  sentences 
like  this  on  the  spur  of  the  moment  was  by 
no  means  the  least  of  his  gifts.  Adjectives, 
quaint,  witty,  or  resounding,  instantly  came 
at  his  call  to  describe,  illustrate,  or  qualify 
any  substantive  that  was  uppermost  in  his 
mind  at  the  time. 

In  an  insurance  trial  in  which  Mr.  Choate 
was  engaged  he  spent  a  day  or  more  in  the 
cross-examination  of  a  witness  who  swore 
positively  as  to  the  facts  in  dispute,  but 
who  was  compelled  by  the  advocate's  search- 
ing questions  to  admit  his  general  bad  char- 
acter. The  testimony  of  this  scamp  had  to 
be  broken  down,  or  the. case  must  be  lost. 
In  addressing  the  jury,  Mr.  Choate  gave  a 


22  :50ME   RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

vivid  presentation  of  the  vices  and  crimes 
of  the  witness,  whom  he  represented  as  the 
basest  and  meanest  of  mankind,  and  then 
asked,  "  Do  you  suppose,  gentlemen,  that  in 
this  vast  violation  of  all  the  sentiments  and 
virtues  that  bind  men  together  in  civil  so- 
ciety, veracity  alone  would  survive  in  the 
chaos  of  such  a  character? — the  'last  rose 
of  summer'  on  such  a  soil?"  The  empha- 
sis on  "veracity"  and  "such"  was  potent 
enough  to  kill  the  witness.  The  jury  dis- 
believed him,  and  Mr.  Choate  gained  his 
case.  The  rogue  may  or  may  not  have  tes- 
tified trnly  as  to  the  point  under  discussion, 
but  truth  could  not  be  reasonably  expected 
from  a  person  who  was  self-convicted  of 
almost  every  wickedness  but  perjury. 

In  his  arguments  for  persons  who  had 
become  complicated  in  seemingly  criminal 
acts  of  which  they  were,  at  least,  not  so 
guilty  as  they  were  accused  of  being,  his 
masterly  way  of  putting  himself,  by  imagi- 
nation, in  the  place  of  his  clients,  and  ex- 
hibiting all  the  pathos  that  could  be  elicited 
from  their  embarrassments  and  struggles, 
often  drenched  his  clients  themselves  in  ir- 
repressible tears.  They  hardly  knew  before 
what  heroes  and  martyrs  they  were.  They 
wept  at  the  eloquent  recapitulation  of  what 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  23 

tlioy  liad  suffered  and  done;  they  became 
poetic  personages,  worthy  of  the  pen  of  Scott 
or  Dickens  ;  indeed,  they  were  so  much  af- 
fected that  they  considered  Lawyer  Choate 
should  charge  little  for  presenting  them  be- 
fore the  community  in  their  true  light,  and 
therefore  often  forgot  or  neglected  to  pay 
him  any  thing.  His  dramatic  power  in  ex- 
hibiting the  interior  feelings  of  the  half 
guilty,  the  quarter  guilty,  and  the  guilty 
who  are  perfectly  innocent  in  their  own  con- 
ceit, and  therefore  regard  a  prosecution  as  a 
persecution,  was  so  wonderful  that  many  of 
the  persons  who  were  acquitted  through  his 
exertions  never  paid  him  what  they  would 
have  paid  an  advocate  who  had  less  identi- 
fied himself  with  their  interests  and  char- 
acters. Indeed,  after  his  work  was  done 
he  appeared  himself  to  set  a  modest  esti- 
mate on  its  value.  The  occasions  when  he 
obtained  large  fees  were  due  to  his  partner, 
who  made  the  contracts  beforehand ;  for  Mr. 
Choate  generally  considered  the  obstacles 
in  the  way  of  getting  a  verdict  for  his  cli- 
ents formidable  until  the  case  was  settled, 
and  was  indifferent  to  the  amount  of  the 
fee  only  after  he  had  succeeded. 

But  he  was  not  only  an  accomplished  law- 
yer :  he  was,  at  times,  an  eager  politician.    I 


24  SOME  KECOLLECTIONS  OF 

will  try  to  recall  some  sentences  in  his  popu- 
lar addresses.  In  a  campaign  appeal  to  the 
Boston  Whigs,  when  Polk,  a  comparatively 
unknown  inau,was  the  Democratic  candidate 
for  the  Presidency,  Mr.  Choate  gave  full  play 
to  his  peculiar  \vit  and  fancy.  "We  will," 
he  exclaimed,  "  return  James  K.  Polk  to  the 
Convention  that  discovered  him !"  In  depict- 
ing Polk's  sure  defeat,  he  declared  that  he 
would  "disappear  like  the  lost  Pleiad,  where 
no  telescope  could  find  him!"  In  reading 
an  "  open  letter"  of  the  Free-soil  Democrats, 
"surreptitiously"  published  in  the  New  York 
Evening  Po«f,he  paused  at  the  end,  as  if  over- 
come by  surprise.  "  I  find,  gentlemen,  that 
this  letter  is  marked  'private  and  confiden- 
tial/ and  such,  I  trust,  you  will  consider  it !" 
The  idea  of  confiding  a  secret  of  that  sort 
to  three  thousand  people  struck  every  man 
in  the  audience  with  a  sense  of  its  humor, 
and  there  was  a  roar  of  applause,  which  for 
some  minutes  prevented  the  orator  from 
proceeding.  On  another  occasion  he  ad- 
dressed a  Union  meeting  in  Faneuil  Hall, 
composed  equally  of  Whigs  and  Democrats. 
I  wish  types  could  express  the  wit  of  one 
passage  by  indicating  the  rise,  culmination, 
and  sudden  fall  of  his  voice.  "  You  Whig !'' 
he  exclaimed,  "  and  YOU  DEMOCRAT  WHO 


RUFUS   CHOATE.  25 

ARE  JUST  AS  GOOD  AS  A  WHIG— in  your 
own  opinion!"  The  last  clause  should  be 
printed  ill  the  smallest  type  which  the  print- 
er can  command.  The  laughter  which  suc- 
ceeded the  qualification  was  deafening,  and 
it  came  from  the  representatives  of  both 
parties. 

When  Mr.  Sumner's  first  election  to  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States  was  in  doubt, 
Sumner  met  Choate  as  he  was  entering  the 
Court-house.  "  Ah,  Mr.  Choate,"  said  Sum- 
ner, pleasantly,  "marching,  I  suppose,  to 
another  forensic  triumph  ?"  Choate  had  on 
his  old  camlet  cloak — known  to  all  members 
of  the  bar — and  drawing  it  melodramatic- 
ally up  over  his  weird  face,  and  looking  like 
one  of  the  witches  in  Macbeth,  he  mocking- 
ly answered,  in  his  deepest  tones,  "  Glamis 
thou  art,  and  Cawdor !"  and  then  disappear- 
ed through  the  door.  Sumner  was  accused 
of  lacking  the  perception  of  humor,  but  he 
always  told  this  incident  as  if  he  had  it  in 
a  high  degree. 

A  distinguished  Free-soiler,  after  the  nom- 
ination of  Taylor  for  the  Presidency,  accost- 
ed Mr.  Choate  in  the  street,  and  told  him 
that  the  Free-soil  section  of  the  Whig  party 
was  determined  to  oppose  the  nomination 
at  the  polls.  "What  can  you  do?"  said 
B 


26  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

Mr. Choate.  "Perhaps  little,"  was  the  re- 
ply; "but  at  least  Massachusetts  can  lire 
her  gun  in  the  air."  "  Yes,"  at  once  retorted 
Mr.  Choate,  "  and  hit  her  guardian  angel  in 
the  eye." 

When  Dr.  Webster,  the  murderer  of  Park- 
man,  was  in  prison  after  his  conviction,  Mr. 
Choate  met  in  a  street  car  an  eminent  cler- 
gyman who  was  inclined  to  believe  that  the 
criminal  was  innocent,  and  who  visited  him 
frequently.  "  How  do  you  find  the  object 
of  your  pastoral  care  ?"  asked  Mr.  Choate. 
"Well,"  was  the  reply,  "I  always  find  him 
I'M."  "And,"  returned  Mr.  Choate,  "  it  will  be 
long,  I  think,  before  you  tind  him  out"  In- 
deed, in  repartee  he  always  had  the  last 
word.  Xobody  ever  went  away  from  him 
with  the  consolation  that  he  had  surpassed 
him  in  quickness  of  retort. 

In  one  of  his  literary  lectures  Mr.  Choate 
referred  to  the  fact  that  Marie  Antoinette, 
after  her  unsuccessful  attempt  to  escape 
with  her  husband  from  France,  entered  on 
the  eveuingof  that  day  her  new  prison-house 
a  beautiful  woman,  and  on  the  next  morn- 
ing emerged  from  it  with  her  loveliness  all 
gone.  He  put  it  in  this  way:  "The  beauty  of 
Austria  fell  from  her  brow,  like  a  veil,  in  a  sin- 
gle night."  Any  body  who  appreciates  the 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  27 

meaning  of  the  word  "  imagination"  can  not 
fail  to  note  the  force  of  "  the  beauty  of  Aus- 
tria" It  was  not  merely  the  queen's  indi- 
vidual beauty,  but  the  beauty  of  her  mother, 
Maria  Theresa,  and  of  all  the  princesses  of 
the  Hapsburg  house  since  its  foundation, 
that  fell  from  her  brow  "like  a  veil"  in  a  sin- 
gle night.  The  hopelessness  of  the  struggle 
of  all  rank  and  beauty  against  the  ghastly 
uprising  of  an  oppressed  people  is  also  indi- 
cated in  this  grand  imaginative  generaliza- 
tion. The  beauty  was  a  mere  "  veil,"  that 
must  be  dropped  when  the  fierce  passions  of 
a  famished  and  enraged  populace  overturn- 
ed all  the  sentiments  which  sprung  from  an 
aristocratic  chivalry,  based  on  a  worship  of 
beauty  nobly  born.  What  was  most  curi- 
ous in  this  utterance  was  the  lowness  of  the 
tone  of  the  orator's  voice  as  he  delivered  it. 
I  am  sure  that  the  words  "  like  a  veil"  could 
not  have  been  heard  by  fifty  people  among 
the  three  thousand  Avho  listened  to  the  lec- 
ture. I  happened  to  be  very  near  the  speak- 
er, and  noted  how  completely  he  seemed 
abstracted  from  the  audience  when,  in  a 
tone  of  thrilling,  tender  sadness,  he  inter- 
polated this  statement  as  a  parenthesis  be- 
tween the  rush  of  words  which  preceded 
and  followed  it. 


28  SOME  liECOLLECTIONS  OF 

On  one  hot  summer  afternoon,  a  day  or 
two  after  he  had  delivered  his  address  on 
Kossuth  before  the  literary  societies  of  a 
Vermont  College  —  an  address  all  ablaze 
with  the  characteristics  of  his  resplendent 
rhetoric,  but  still  with  a  statesman-like 
judgment  and  forecast  regulating  its  im- 
passioned eloquence — I  met  him  at  the  Bos- 
ton Athenaeum,  and  naturally  alluded  to  the 
splendid  success  of  his  oration.  "Ah!"  he 
replied,  with  an  immense  yawn,  "was  it  a 
success?  I  thought  not.  By-the-Avay,  didn't 
you  talk  to  the  same  societies  last  year  •'•"  I 
was  reluctantly  compelled  to  admit  that  I 
was  guilty  of  the  offense.  "  Well,  the  truth 
is  (between  ourselves,  mind  you!)  that  I 
found  you  had  so  corrupted  the  young  men 
with  your  confounded  rhetoric,  that  my 
plain  common.-sense  had  no  effect  on  them 
whatever."  The  impressive  seriousness  with 
which  this  reproof  was  given  was  only  re- 
lieved by  a  power,  which  Mr.  Choate  pos- 
sessed, of  indicating  the  humor  of  a  remark 
through  a  peculiar  flash  from  the  white  por- 
tion of  his  left  eye,  while  the  rest  of  his 
countenance  remained  in  immovable  and 
impenetrable  gravity.  The  v.iuk  he  gave 
me  ! — shall  I  ever  forget  it  ? 

On  another  of  the  occasions  when  I  had 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  29 

the  pleasure  of  meeting  him  the  topic  was 
the  relative  rank  of  the  great  generals  of 
the  world.  "On  the  whole,"  he  said,  "I 
think  we  must  take  Hannibal  as  the  great- 
est of  them  all.  For  just  look  at  the  ef- 
frontery of  the  fellow — scaling  the  Alps 
with  a  lot  of  Carthaginians — ragamuffins, 
niggers — to  fight  the  Destiny  of  Rome  !  And 
then,  you  know,  the  scamp,  with  his  rascal 
rout,  nearly  succeeded  in  his  purpose  of 
overturning  the  design  even  of  Divine  Prov- 
idence !  You  may  depend  upon  it,  he  is  the 
biggest  general  of  the  whole  gang  of  them !" 

Choate  was  never  tired  of  eulogizing 
Cicero  and  Burke.  "The  man,"  he  once 
said  to  me,  "  who  will  write  an  article  ade- 
quately describing,  comparing,  and  contrast- 
ing those  two  men  of  genius  Avill  do  a  great 
work."  "But,"  I  answered,  "that  is  the 
very  thing  that  all  of  us  are  eager  for  you 
to  do.  You  can  do  it  better  than  any  body 
else."  "  Oh,  of  course,"  he  answered,  with 
a  shrng  of  his  shoulders ;  "you  may  be  sure 
it  shall  be  done."  Of  course  he  never  did  it. 

On  a  transient  meeting  Avith  him,  the  con- 
versation turned  on  the  charge  that  Burke's 
seeming  apostasy  to  the  cause  of  liberty  in 
his  works  on  the  French  Revolution  was 
caused  by  a  desire  for  power  and  a  pension. 


30  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

I  alluded  to  the  impossibility  that  character 
arid  passion  could  be  subsidized  as  well  as 
imagination  and  genius;  that  Burke  must 
have  been  morally  honest  in  writing  the 
works  that  incidentally  gave  him  some  fif- 
teen thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  that  those 
writers  who  accused  him  of  being  bought 
by  the  English  court  grossly  misapprehend- 
ed him.  "  Misapprehended  him  !"  exclaimed 
Choate;  "they  were  leasts!  BEASTS!"  The 
way  he  rose  from  his  chair  and  strode  about 
the  room  as  he  uttered  this  opinion  con- 
vinced me,  at  least,  that  his  own  political 
course  could  never  have  been  influenced  by 
the  desire  either  of  power  or  money.  In- 
deed, every  body  who  knew  Choate  knew 
that  there  was  nothing  in  the  power  of  tho 
people  of  the  United  States  to  give  in  the 
way  of  political  preferment  that  he  regarded 
as  worth  striving  for  as  a  matter  of  political 
ambition.  He  had  been  a  Representative 
and  a  Senator  in  Congress,  but  as  he  grew 
old  he  disliked  every  thing  in  politics  which 
drew  him  away  from  his  library  during  the 
brief  hours  of  leisure  which  his  profession- 
al engagements  enabled  him  to  enjoy.  He 
spoke  for  his  political  party  and  his  politic- 
al convictions  when  he  was  called  upon  to 
do  so,  but  the  ordinary  details  of  politics 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  31 

were  abhorrent  to  him.  They  were  a  bore. 
The  only  assaults  on  his  political  integrity 
were  made  during  the  later  years  of  his  life. 
Those  who  opposed  his  opinions — and  I 
ranked  among  them — must  have  known 
that  it  was  a  real  sentiment  of  patriotism, 
however  misdirected,  and  not  any  paltry 
love  of  lucre  or  place,  that  inspired  the 
thrilling  addresses  with  which  he  bravely 
confronted  the  dominant  sentiment  of  Mas- 
sachusetts after  1850.  It  is  curious  that 
those  who  accuse  him  of  cowardice  and 
time-serving  at  this  period  forget  that  only 
obloquy  could  result  from  the  position  he 
took.  The  coward  and  the  time-server  are 
seen  in  the  wake  of  the  reformer  when  the 
reformer  has  the  vote  of  the  State  with  him 
Choate  withstood  an  impulse  so  strong  that 
any  sagacity  much  less  keen  than  his  must 
have  known  that  it  was  more  politic  to  fol- 
low than  to  withstand  the  movement ;  but 
he  deliberately  chose  the  unpopular  side, 
and  cheerfully  submitted  to  be  lampooned 
by  hundreds  of  politicians  who  would  have 
hailed  him  as  the  noblest  and  most  elo- 
quent of  men  if  he  had  only  drifted  with 
the  stream  instead  of  manfully  breasting  it. 
His  opinions  were  so  opposed  to  mine,  that 
it  is  a  delight  to  record  this  testimony  to 


32  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

his  political  honesty.  He  bad  nothing  to 
gain  by  tbe  course  be  pursued,  aiid  be  bad 
mucb  to  lose.  Now  tbat  tbe  passions  of 
tbat  time  have  subsided,  all  Republicans 
can  afford  to  do  justice  to  Cboate.  He  was 
not  on  their  side ;  but  had  he  been  on  their 
side  they  would  have  forced  honors  upon 
him.  He  never,  by-tbe-way,  during  his  po- 
litical career  had  any  need  to  solicit  office ; 
it  was  always  freely  urged  upon  him  as  a 
testimony  of  bis  fellow-citizens  to  his  genius 
and  capacity. 

But  to  return  to  my  recollections  of  him. 
It  was  impossible  to  meet  him  for  even  half 
a  minute,  as  he  was  striding  from  his  dwell- 
ing to  his  daily  business,  without  eliciting 
from  his  ever-active  mind  some  quaint  re- 
mark. A  friend  of  mine  greeted  him  one 
day  just  as  he  was  turning  from  Washing- 
ton Street  into  a  narrow  lane  leading  to  the 
Court-house.  Mr.  Choate  answered  the  sal- 
utation, and,  as  he  turned  to  go  down  tbe 
narrow  passage,  said,  with  much  mock  grav- 
ity, "  Convenient,  though  ignominious!" 

He  was  once  engaged  in  the  great  legal 
controversy  between  the  different  owners  of 
water-power  on  the  Blackstone  Eiver.  The 
case  was  one  which  really  rested  on  nice 
mathematical  computations,  and  was  final- 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  33 

ly  settled  by  mathematicians.  Choate  was 
puzzled  by  tbe  intricacy  of  tbe  case,  and 
meeting  Mr.  Folsom,  tbe  librarian  of  tbe 
jBoston  Athenaeum,  one  morning  in  a  book- 
jstore,  be  said  to  him:  "Pray,  Mr.  Folsom, 
jbave  we  in  the  Athenaeum  any  books  relat- 
ing to  tbe  flow  of  water,  the  turning  of  it 
back,  and  playing  tbe  devil  with  it  gener 
ally?" 

There  was  so  much  intensity  i  n  Mr.Choate's 
nature  that  I  often  wondered  lio\v  he  could 
help  tormenting  himself  in  thinking  over 
the  cases  be  lost  where  the  verdict  should 
have  been  for  the  side  on  which  he  was  en- 
gaged. One  afternoon,  after  he  had  made 
an  address  to  tbe  Legislature,  or  a  commit- 
tee of  the  Legislature,  of  one  of  the  New 
England  States,  and  bad  plainly  failed  of 
success  through  a  political  prejudice  excited 
against  him  by  the  opposing  counsel,  I  met 
him  calmly  exploring  the  alcoves  of  the 
Athenaeum  in  search  of  some  book.  In  al- 
luding to  the  palpable  injustice  of  tbe  recep- 
tion of  bis  legal  argument  the  day  before,  I 
expressed  my  astonishment  that  be  should 
seem  so  careless  about  tbe  result*  "  Oh !'' 
he  answered,  "when  I  have  once  argued  a 
case,  and  it  is  settled,  I  am  done  with  it.  I 
cast  it  forcibly  out  of  my  mind,  and  never 
C 


31  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

allow  it  to  trouble  niy  peace.  I  should  go 
mad,"  lie  added,  with  a  sudden  lift  of  bis 
hand  tlirougli  his  abundant  locks,  "  if  I  al- 
lowed it  to  abide  in  my  thoughts.  What, 
by-the-vray,  do  you  think  of  this  curious 
life  of  Shelley,  written  by  a  fellow  who 
calls  himself  a  Jefferson  somebody — Hogg  ?" 
In  an  instant  the  conversation  was  thus 
changed  to  Shelley  and  his  latest  biogra- 
pher. I  never  met  a  man  whose  genius  was 
as  sensitive  as  his  who  had  such  a  complete 
control  of  his  mind  and  sensibility.  He  was 
the  absolute  autocrat  of  all  the  thoughts 
and  fancies  teeming  in  his  fertile  mind,  ex- 
ercised over  them  a  tyrannous  dominion, 
and  never  allowed  them  to  possess  him,  but 
always  possessed  them. 

One  of  the  charms  of  Mr.Choate's  conver- 
sation was  his  habit  of  exaggeration.  To 
attend  the  performance  of  Mozart's  Don  Gio- 
ranni  was  like  listening,  he  said,  to  ten  thou- 
sand forests  of  birds.  He  knew  that  no  ex- 
aggeration in  mere  words  could  adequately 
express  the  delight  that  a  sympathetic  mind 
feels  in  coming  into  vital  acquaintance  with 
a  work  of  transcendent  genius  in  any  depart- 
ment of  literature  and  the  fine  arts.  Ten 
thousand  birds  would  be  a  small  testimony 
to  the  melodies  of  Mozart;  but  ten  thousand 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  35 

forests  of  birds  is  a  comparison  which  indi- 
cates the  rapture  of  wonder  and  admiration 
which  Mozart's  masterpiece  excites  in  all 
souls  capable  of  feeling  its  beauty.  With 
this  tendency  to  verbal  exaggeration  Choate 
had  that  instantaneous  humorous  recoil 
from  extravagant  assertion  characteristic 
of  ardent  natures  whose  sense  of  the  ludi- 
crous is  as  quick  as  their  sense  of  the  beauti- 
ful aud  the  sublime.  "Interpret  to  me  the 
libretto,"  he  said  to  his  daughter,  "  lest  I  di- 
late at  the  wrong  emotion."  Sydney  Smith 
never  said  any  thing  better  than  that! 

Nobody  at  the  bar  ever  equalled  him  in 
paying  ironical  compliments  to  the  judges 
who  blocked  his  way  to  the  hearts  and  un- 
derstandings of  juries.  Judge  Shaw  was 
specially  noted  for  the  gruff  way  in  which 
he  interposed  such  obstacles,  and  Shaw's 
depth  of  legal  learning  was  not  more  con- 
spicuous than  his  force  of  character.  "'Tisn't 
so,  Mr.  Choate,"  was  a  frequent  interruption, 
when  Shaw  was  on  the  bench  and  Choate 
was  arguing  a  case  before  him.  Choate's 
side  remarks  on  the  judge  have  passed  into 
the  stereotyped  jokes  of  the  bar,  and  are 
now  somewhat  venerable.  One  is,  I  think, 
not  commonly  stated  in  the  exact  words. 
"  I  always  approach  Judge  Shaw,"  he  said, 


36  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

'•as  a  savage  approaches  his  fetich,  know- 
ing  that  he  is  ugly,  but  feeling  that  he  is 
great."  Of  Judge  Story  he  once  remarked, 
"I  never  heard  him  pronounce  a  judgment 
in  which  he  did  not  argue  the  case  better 
than  the  counsel  on  either  side;  and  for 
which,"  he  added,  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eye, 
"he  might  very  properly  have  been  impeach- 
ed." He  delighted  in  gravely  joking  with 
a  judge.  Thus  he  once  asked  that  a  case 
might  be  postponed,  owing  to  his  engage- 
ment in  another  court.  The  judge  replied 
that  the  case  was  one  in  which  he  might 
write  out  his  argument.  With  a  mock  so- 
lemnity, which  it  always  seemed  to  me  no 
other  human  countenance  could  so  readily 
assume,  he  replied,  "  I  write  well,  your  Hon- 
or, but  slowly"  As  his  handwriting  resem- 
bled the  tracks  of  wild-cats,  with  their  claws 
dipped  in  ink,  madly  dashing  over  the  sur- 
face of  a  folio  sheet  of  white  paper,  the  as- 
sembled bar  could  not  restrain  their  laugh- 
ter. Indeed,  it  is  affirmed  that  he  could  not 
decipher  his  own  handwriting  after  a  case 
was  concluded,  and  had  to  call  in  experts 
to  explain  it  to  himself.  He  congratulated 
himself  on  the  fact  that  if  he  failed  to  get 
a  living  at  the  bar,  he  could  still  go  to  China 
and  support  himself  by  his  pen ;  that  is,  by 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  37 

decorating  tea-cliests.  On  one  occasion  he 
was  employed  by  a  Lalf-crazed  litigant  to 
carry  a  case,  dismissed  by  the  court  below, 
to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  State.  It  was 
a  case  resembling  the  one  immortalized  by 
Scott — that  of  Peter  Peebles  versus  Plain- 
staines ;  but  tiie  Peter  Peebles  in  this  con- 
troversy was  as  rich  as  he  was  litigious. 
Choate  frankly  told  him  that  the  excep- 
tions his  counsel  had  taken  were  of  no  ac- 
count in  law;  but  the  client  insisted  that 
he  should  present  them  to  the  assembled 
judges,  and  was  indifferent  as  to  the  fee. 
There  never  was  a  more  solemn  face  pre- 
sented to  a  bench  of  jurists  than  the  face 
of  Choate  as  he  argued  point  after  point  of 
this  hopeless  case  ;  but  it  was  observed  that 
every  time  he  made  a  new  point  he  intro- 
duced it  with  a  sly  wink  to  some  one  of  the 
lawyers  in  attendance.  The  bench  and  the 
lawyers  were  tormented  with  the  agony 
which  comes  from  laughter  decorously  sup- 
pressed, while  the  advocate,  except  his  oc- 
casional winks  to  his  brother  lawyers,  was 
the  very  personification  of  legal  gravity. 

At  dinner  parties  he  was  the  most  de- 
lightful of  companions.  "That,"  he  re- 
marked of  some  "Ashburton  sherry,"  which 
was  rather  strong  than  delicate — "  that  is  a 


38  SOME   RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

very  good  Fauenil-Hallish  drink !"  His  talk 
oil  books  was  always  delightful  and  dis- 
criminating, with  an  occasional  eccentric 
deviation  from  the  general  judgment  on  an 
author,  which  made  it  all  the  more  fascina- 
ting. The  world  of  books,  indeed,  was  that 
"  real  world"  in  which  he  lived  whenever 
the  pauses  of  his  professional  engagements 
enabled  him  to  indulge  in  the  luxury;  and 
he  adroitly  dodged  every  social  imitation 
in  order  to  devote  to  Bacon,  Shakspeare, 
Milton,  and  Burke — his  favorite  English  au- 
thors— the  hours  Avhich  others  lose  in  what 
is  ironically  called  "  Society."  In  fact,  few 
people  in  Boston  could  converse  with  him 
unless  they  met  him  in  his  daily  walk 
around  the  Common,  or  in  the  AtheuaBum, 
or  as  he  went  from  his  residence  to  the 
Court-house.  Yet  no  Bostouiaii  seemed 
more  open  to  conversation,  and  certainly  no 
one  ever  left,  in  his  chance  meetings  with 
acquaintances  of  all  grades  and  pursuits, 
such  an  impression  of  good  nature  and 
brilliancy.  Boston  swarms  to-day  with  ad- 
mirers of  Choate  who  only  met  him.  acci- 
dentally, as  I  did.  In  a  minute's  conversa- 
tion he  condensed  what  could  have  been  ob- 
tained from  no  other  celebrities  of  the  city 
in  an  hour's  discourse.  He  appeared,  flash- 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  39 

ed  on  you  a  remark,  and  then  disappeared 
to  his  work.  Yet  more  people  knew  him 
and  talked  about  him  than  knew  or  talked 
about  any  other  eminent  Bostoiiian. 

Mr.  Choate  greedily  devoured  every  book 
relating  to  ancient  Greece,  even  the  most 
ephemeral.  Of  one  of  these  he  said :  "  The 
author  seems  to  know  a  good  deal,  but  he  is 
too  confident  as  to  those  mysterious  Pelas- 
gians,  at  the  bottom  of  the  whole  history ; 
he  Pelasyizes  too  much."  The  English  his- 
torians of  Greece,  even  Thirl  wall  and  Grote, 
he  thought  were  more  or  less  biassed  by 
party  feelings.  In  writing  about  ancient 
Greece,  "they  were  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously influenced,"  he  said,  "  by  their  opin- 
ions as  to  the  personal  and  political  charac- 
ter of  Charles  James  Fox."  As  to  his  own 
method  of  learning  the  history  of  Greece,  it 
may  be  affirmed  that  he  studied  the  works 
*  of  the  Greek  orators,  philosophers,  and  his- 
torians in  order  to  become  mentally  a  citi- 
zen of  Greece,  and  thus  to  look  at  Greek 
life  through  a  Greek's  eyes.  By  his  realiz- 
ing imagination  he  instantly  nullified  the 
hard  conditions  of  Time  ;  sent  his  mind  and 
heart  back  two  thousand  or  twenty-five 
hundred  years  to  contemplate  a  civilization 
entirely  different  from  ours ;  and  often,  while 


40  SOME   KKCOLLECTIONS   OF 

lie  was  striding  arouud  Boston  Common  in 
the  age  of  Buchanan,  he  was  really  mak- 
ing himself  a  contemporary  of  the  age  of 
Pericles.  His  imagination  was  in  ancient 
Athens,  while  his  body  was  in  what  is  iron- 
ically called  "  the  modern  Athens."  As  he 
pushed  rapidly  along  in  his  favorite  after- 
noon walk  it  Avas  plain  that  he  was  not  re- 
garding the  objects  before  his  bodily  eyes, 
but  those  before  his  mental  vision  ;  that  he 
was  attending,  perhaps,  the  performance  of 
a  tragedy  of  Sophocles  or  a  comedy  of  Aris- 
tophanes; or  was  indulging  in  a  pleasant 
game  of  chaffing  with  Socrates,  in  some 
Athenian  mechanic's  shop,  on  the  transcend- 
ental "good  aud  fair,"  as  contrasted  with 
tiie  descendental  bad  and  mean ;  or  was  con- 
testing with  Demosthenes  a  cause  before  the 
"  fierce  democracy"  of  Athens ;  or  was  ex- 
hibiting, in  a  visit  to  Aspasia,  that  exqui- 
site courtesy  to  women  in  which  he  excelled 
all  other  gentlemen  of  his  time.  If  I  ever 
crossed  him  in  his  walks,  and  saw  the  weird 
eyes  gazing  into  distant  time  aud  space,  I 
made  it  a  point  of  honor  not  to  interrupt 
his  meditations,  but  to  pass  on  with  a  sim- 
ple bow  of  recognition.  Why  should  I,  for 
the  sake  of  five  minutes'  delightful  conver- 
sation, interrupt  this  hard- worked  man  of 


RUFUS  C1IOATE.  41 

genius  in  his  glorious  imaginative  commun- 
ion with  the  great  of  old  ?  The  temptation 
was  strong,  hut  I  al  ways  overcame  it.  When 
he  Avas  in  Boston,  I  ventured  to  accost  him; 
when  he  was  in  Athens,  I  very  properly  con- 
sidered that  he  was  in  much  better  company 
than  any  which  Boston  could  afford ;  and,  as 
an  humble  denizen  of  the  place,  I  thought  it 
judicious  not  to  obtrude  myself  into  a  se- 
lect circle  of  immortals  to  which  I  was  not 
invited. 

To  obtain  a  complete  idea  of  Mr.  Choate's 
various  talents  and  accomplishments,  the 
reader  is  referred  to  the  edition  of  his  works, 
in  two  octavo  volumes,  published  in  Boston 
in  1862,  and  edited  by  Professor  S.  G.  Brown, 
who  also  contributed  a  long  and  excellent 
biography.  The  biography  includes  copious 
extracts  from  Mr.  Choate's  private  journals 
and  familiar  correspondence.  These  enable 
us  to  penetrate  to  the  inmost  heart  of  the 
man,  and  prove  how  false  were  many  of  the 
rash  judgments  passed  upon  him  while  he 
lived.  It  also  contains  a  number  of  com- 
munications from  his  legal  and  political  as- 
sociates and  opponents,  who,  whether  they 
agreed  or  disagreed  with  him,  preserved  a 
vivid  impression  of  the  force  and  fertility  of 
his  mind,  and  the  manliness  and  kindliness 
C 


42  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS   OF 

of  iiis  nature.  But  its  great  merit  consists 
ill  vindicating  Mr.  CLoate  from  tlie  vulgar 
imputations  on  his  legal  and  political  integ- 
rity; that  is,  on  his  intellectual  conscien- 
tiousness. It  shows  conclusively  that  lie 
considered  the  exercise  of  his  powers  in  jury 
trials  as  an  "  office"  and  not  a  "  trade ;"  that 
he  was  convinced  that  his  part  in  the  deter- 
mination of  a  cause  was  as  much  provided 
for  in  the  law  of  the  land  as  the  parts  as- 
signed to  the  judge,  to  the  opposing  counsel, 
and  to  the  jury ;  and  that  as  an  "  official"  in 
the  administration  of  justice,  it  would  be 
scandalous  for  him  to  spare  time,  labor, 
knowledge,  eloquence,  in  defense  of  his  par- 
ticular client.  That  course  v.*as  decreed  by 
the  whole  theory  of  English  and  American 
law.  He  felt  the  obligation  imposed  upon 
him  so  keenly,  that,  in  his  early  private 
memoranda,  when  a  cause  was  decided  ad- 
versely to  his  view,  he  reproached  himself 
for  not  having  done  more  for  his  client ;  in 
other  words,  for  riot  having  fulfilled  his 
duties,  as  an  official  in  the  administration 
of  the  law,  Avith  more  address,  ability,  and 
command  of  the  law.  It  was  only  by  de- 
grees that  he  surmounted  this  self-distrust, 
and  became  able  to  dismiss  from  his  mind 
at  once  a  case  when  it  had  been  finally 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  43 

settled.  The  volumes  edited  by  Professor 
Brown  contain  also  Mr.  Choate's  most  val- 
uable literary  and  patriotic  addresses,  and 
his  best  speeches  while  he  was  a  Senator  of 
the  United  States.  Whatever  may  be  the 
criticisms  on  his  political  career,  there  can 
be  no  donbt  that  he  never  had,  like  the  eld- 
er brother  mentioned  in  Scripture,  any  "ul- 
terior views  on  the  fatted  calf."  He  was 
almost  forced  by  his  party  into  every  high 
political  position  he  occupied.  He  was  not 
without  political  ambition,  but  it  was  an 
ambition  disconnected  from  any  possibility 
of  personal  emolument,  and,  indeed,  sadly 
interfering  with  his  professional  business 
and  with  his  natural  desire  to  provide  a 
modest  competence  for  his  family.  Every 
thing  mean  and  base  in  politics  he  absolute- 
ly loathed.  To  him  "machine  politics"  were 
equally  a  bore  and  a  blunder.  But  when 
great  national  interests  were  at  stake  he 
was  willing  to  sacrifice  what  few  hours  he 
could  steal  from  his  professional  engage- 
ments, from  his  study  of  the  poets,  histo- 
rians, and  philosophers  of  Greece  and  Rome, 
from  his  delightful  communion  with  the 
spirits  of  Shakspeare,  Bacon,  Milton,  and 
Burke,  to  the  preparation  of  orations  de- 
signed to  influence  the  legislative  or  pop- 


44  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

ular  mind  at  periods  where  what  is  called  a 
"crisis"  threatens  the  interests  of  a  nation. 
The  editor  has  demonstrated  that  whether 
Mr.  Choate  was  right  or  wrong  in  the  vary- 
ing aspects  of  his  political  creed,  he  was 
pure  from  all  forms  of  avarice — the  insidi- 
ous avarice  of  fame  no  less  than  the  more 
open  avarice  of  money  and  office.  In  short, 
he  was  at  heart  a  patriot,  even  when  the 
course  he  took  disappointed  many  of  his 
best  friends  and  admirers. 

What  Professor  Brown  does  not  notice — 
probablj'  as  beneath  the  dignity  of  biog- 
raphy— are  some  of  the  peculiar  relations  of 
Choate  with  Webster.  They  were  strong 
personal  and  political  friends;  when  Web- 
ster desired  to  raise  money,  he  sometimes 
got  Choate  to  indorse  his  note ;  when  Web- 
ster ventured  on  a  daring  political  move,  he 
got  Choate  to  indorse  his  policy;  and  the 
result  was  that  in  either  case  the  indorse- 
ment entailed  on  Choate  pecuniary  embar- 
rassment or  popular  obloquy.  If  one  should 
consult  the  archives  of  the  Boston  Mer- 
chants' Bank,  there  would  doubtless  appear 
sufficient  reasons  why  Choate  should  have 
been  occasionally  troubled  with  a  want  of 
money,  on  account  of  heedlessly  affixing  the 
hieroglyphic  which  passed  for  his  name  on 


RUFU8  CHOATE.  45 

the  back  of  a  promise  to  pay  which  bore 
the  more  flowing  and  familiar  signature  of 
Daniel  Webster ;  and  whenever  his  immense 
popularity  as  au  orator  Avas  at  all  abated,  it 
was  generally  found  that  what  he  lost  in 
popular  estimation  was  due  to  his  honest 
and  cordial  indorsement  of  his  friend's  po- 
litical conduct.  The  only  occasion  on  which 
he  was  ever  charged  with  showing  the  white 
feather  was  in  his  contest  with  Clay  during 
the  early  days  of  Tyler's  Administration. 
Clay  was  the  champion  of  a  bill  for  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  United  States  Bank.  The 
bill  was  sure  to  pass  both  Houses  of  Con- 
gress. Choate  had  been  probably  informed 
by  Webster  that  the  President  would  veto 
it  unless  certain  clauses  were  omitted,  and 
he>  eagerly  urged  that  such  omissions  be 
made,  in  order  to  insure  its  becoming  a  law. 
Clay  instantly  detected  that  some  commu- 
nication had  passed  from  the  Secretary  of 
State  to  the  Senator  of  Massachusetts,  and 
pitilessly  forced  Choate  into  a  corner, 
whence  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  es- 
cape. "Why  are  you  so  confident  that  the 
bill  will  be  vetoed  ?  What  right  have  you  to 
suggest  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  a 
co-ordinate  branch  of  the  government,  that 
the  Executive  is  opposed  to  a  bill,  before  it 


46  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

Las  been  presented  to  him  for  his  signa- 
ture ?  What  arc  your  private  means  of  in- 
formation ?  Tell  us  the  name  of  the  man 
from  whom  you  received  such  information." 
What  could  be  done  by  dexterity  in  evad- 
ing the  real  point  in  issue  Choate  did  mar- 
vellously well;  but  his  friend  Webster  had 
got  him  into  a  "  fix"  from  which  neither  cour- 
age nor  ingenuity  could  get  him  out.  Clay 
was  insolent  and  overbearing,  for  he  was  at- 
tacked by  one  of  his  periodical  fits  of  hatred 
against  his  great  rival  for  the  prize  of  the 
Presidency,  who  was  then  Secretary  of 
State,  and  he  lavished  on  Choate  the  wrath 
he  intended  to  fall  on  Webster.  It  was 
sounded  all  over  the  country  that  Choate 
had  quailed  before  Clay.  Even  in  the  State 
he  represented  Choate  was  long  considered 
to  have  lacked,  in  this  instance,  that  intre- 
pidity which  he  had  never  before  failed  to 
.show  in  any  contest  at  the  bar  or  in  the 
Senate.  The  truth  is  that  Clay,  on  the 
next  meeting  of  the  Senate,  magnanimously 
apologized  for  the  rudeness  of  his  assault, 
and  shook  hands  with  Choate  with  all  the 
cordiality  that  can  be  expected  from  a 
statesman  who  is  immeasurably  ambitious. 
As  far  as  Choate  was  wrong  in  this  con- 
flict it  was  owing  to  his  friendship  for  Web- 


RUFUS  CIIOATE.  47 

ster ;  and  that  tliero  was  not  a  taint  of  cow- 
ardice in  his  nature  was  soon  after  shown 
in  his  contest  with  the  great  fire-eater  of 
the  South,  the  redoubtable  Senator  M'Duf- 
fie,  of  South  Carolina.  His  reply  to  M'Duf- 
fie's  violent  and  insolent  assault  on  his 
tariff  speech  is  a  masterpiece  of  argument, 
edged  with  every  appliance  of  scorn,  sar- 
casm, and  invective  which  his  wit  and  fan- 
cy could  command.  There  was  no  question 
as  to  his  courage  in  that  encounter.  M'Duf- 
fie  was  a  duellist  debater,  whose  body  was 
riddled  with  bullets  received  in  many  a 
quarrel  which  his  effrontery  had  provoked ; 
but  he  submitted  to  Choate's  "  punishment" 
without  a  thought  of  sending  him  a  chal- 
lenge. It  is  doubtful  if  his  contentious  and 
belligerent  temper  ever  before  quietly  en- 
dured such  a  series  of  polished  insults  as 
Choate  heaped  upon  him. 

Still  it  must  be  admitted  that  Choate, 
in  his  political  connection  with  Webster, 
seemed  to  submit  to  the  control  of  a  master- 
mind. No  two  men  could  be  more  widely 
contrasted  in  their  characters,  in  their  men- 
tal processes,  in  their  style  of  expression. 
They  were  often  brought  into  conflict  in 
the  trial  of  causes;  at  times  it  appeared  as 
if  they  were  mortal  enemies,  so  strenuous 


48  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

was  each  in  supporting  his  particular  side; 
ar,:l  as  ail  advocate,  Choatc  grappled  with 
Webster — mind  Avith  mind  and  man  with 
man — with  an  intrepid  pertinacity  which 
left  no  doubt  on  the  court  and  jury  that 
his  respect  for  him  did  not  control  the  ve- 
hement logic  and  still  more  vehement  rhet- 
oric with  which  he  urged,  against  Webster's 
arguments  and  eloquence,  the  strong  points 
of  the  case  he  was  employed  to  state  and 
defend.  On  one  occasion,  while  Webster 
sat  gravely  listening  to  the  impassioned  el- 
oquence of  his  opponent,  he  turned  to  one 
of  the  junior  counsel  and  remarked :  "  Some 
of  our  technical  brethren  of  the  bar  would 
call  all  that  flimsy  humbug ;  if  it  be  so, 
which  I  deny,  it  is  still  humbug  which  stirs 
men's  souls  to  their  inmost  depths.  It  is 
reason  impelled  by  passion,  sustained  by  le- 
gal learning,  and  adorned  by  fancy."  There 
•were  few  advocates  that  Webster  feared 
more  than  Choate  when  there  Avas  a  trial 
of  strength  between  them.  On  such  occa- 
sions it  was  observed  that  he  studiously  re- 
frained from  ai)3r  attempt  to  riA~al  his  oppo- 
nent in  eloquence.  He  adopted  a  dry,  hard, 
sensible  tone  of  statement  and  argument. 
He  ironically  complimented  the  learned 
counsel  opposed  to  him  for  his  impassioned 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  49 

flights  of  eloquence,  Avhicb,  as  poetry,  lie 
had  himself  enjoyed  as  much  as  he  supposed 
the  twelve  honest  and  practical  men  who 
were  to  decide  on  the  case  had  doubtless 
enjoyed  them.  Nothing  could  be  better,  if 
,  questions  of  fact  and  law  were  to  be  influ- 
enced by  beautiful  displays  of  wit  and  im- 
agination, than  his  learned  brother's  argu- 
ment; but,  gentlemen — and  here  Webster 
assumed  all  the  weight  and  consequence 
which  his  imposing  form  and  penetrating 
voice  naturally  gave  him — this  is  a  ques- 
tion not  of  poetry,  but  of  fact.  It  is  purely 
a  matter  of  commonplace,  every-day  occur- 
rence. There  are  no  heroes  and  no  hero- 
ines in  it,  no  tragedy  and  no  comedy,  but 
plain  people  like  you  and  me — mere  Smiths 
and  Robinsons — and  you  are  called  upon  to 
decide  between  them  as  you  would  decide 
a  dispute  between  your  own  friends  and 
neighbors.  He  would  then,  proceed  to  re- 
duce all  the  circumstances  of  the  case  to 
the  low  level  of  actual  life,  pitilessly  ridi- 
cule Choate's  high-wrought  rhetoric,  and 
exhibit  the  bare,  skeleton  facts,  stripped  of 
all  their  coverings,  in  connection  with  the 
law  that  applied  to  them,  confident  that 
there  were  twelve  solid  and  sensible  Web- 
sters  in  the  jury-box  who  would  sustain 
C*  D 


50  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

Liin  in  his  judgment  of  the  case.  He  some- 
times succeeded,  sometimes  failed,  in  this 
process  of  disenchantment ;  but,  at  any  rate, 
he  rarely,  in  his  legal  contests  with  Choatc, 
availed  himself  of  his  latent  power  of  over- 
whelming declamation,  in  which  his  logic 
was  made  thoroughly  red-hot  with  passion, 
and,  so  to  speak,  burned  its  way  into  the 
minds  of  the  jury.  Thus  in  the  famous 
"  Smith  will"  case,  in  Northampton,  Choato 
was  opposed  to  Webster,  and  made  one  of 
the  most  learned,  ingenious,  powerful,  and 
impassioned  arguments  ever  addressed  to  a 
Massachusetts  court.  Webster  replied  by 
a  simple  statement  of  the  case,  and  studi- 
ously avoided  any  rivalry  with  Choate  in 
respect  to  eloquence.  He  obtained  the  ver- 
dict, not  so  much  by  the  force  of  his  argu- 
ment as  by  the  singular  felicity  with  which 
he  conducted  the  examination  of  the  prin- 
cipal witness  in  the  case,  who  was  afflicted 
by  a  nervous  timidity  which,  in  a  jury  trial, 
might  have  been  converted  into  an  indica- 
tion of  insanity,  had  not  Webster  extended 
to  him  his  powerful  protection,  and  pre- 
vented the  other  side  from  cross-examining 
him  into  delirium.  As  the  case  really  de- 
pended on  the  sanity  of  this  witness,  Choate's 
magnificent  argument  proved  of  no  avail. 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  51 

It  is  a  pity,  however,  that  his  subtle  analy- 
sis of  morbid  states  of  mind  which  are  ever 
on  the  point  of  toppling  over  into  insanity 
has  not  been  preserved. 

But  while,  as  an  advocate,  Clioate  boldly 
confronted  Webster  in  the  trial  of  causes, 
and  at  the  bar  was  ever  ready  to  put  his 
individuality  as  well  as  his  intellect  and  le- 
gal learning  into  opposition  to  Webster's, 
he  showed,  as  has  been  previously  stated, 
an  unmistakable  sense  of  inferiority  to  him 
in  statesmanship,  and  in  questions  of  pub- 
lic policy  almost  always  followed  his  lead. 
He  did  it  in  his  own  peculiar  way,  but  every 
body  more  or  less  felt  that  he  was  a  follower 
and  not  a  leader  in  matters  of  the  higher 
politics  of  the  country.  There  were  sev- 
eral occasions — notably  that  after  Webster 
had  made  his  speech  of  the  7th  of  March, 
1850 — when  he  might  have  easily  assumed 
the  leadership  in  Massachusetts  of  the 
party  \vhich,  ten  years  after,  obtained  the 
control  of  the  whole  political  administration 
of  the  country ;  but  he  preferred,  against 
all  temptations  that  could  be  presented  to 
his  ambition,  to  stand  by  the  man  whom  he 
had  deliberately  elected  as  his  chief.  There 
was  no  servility  in  this  choice  ;  it  was  rath- 
er owing  to  an  inward  feeling  that  in  po* 


52  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

litical  experience  and  sagacity  lie  was  no 
match  for  the  great  lawyer  he  had  fear- 
lessly enough  encountered  at  the  bar. 

Perhaps  the  weight  and  power 'of  Web- 
ster's character  were  due  as  much  to  the 
hours  he  spent  in  the  woofts  and  fields  and 
on  the  ocean,  chatting  with  farmers  or  sail- 
ors as  he  was  engaged  in  hunting  or  fishing, 
as  to  the  hours  he  spent  in  his  study.  He 
was  essentially  an  out-of-doors  man,  devot- 
ing a  full  third  of  the  year  to  the  pursuits 
or  sports  of  a  country  gentleman  ;  often,  in- 
deed, following  out  the  trains  of  a  logical 
argument  while  he  was  tramping  along 
through  muddy  forests,  rifle  in  hand,  eager 
for  an  opportunity  to  get  a  good  shot  at 
game,  or  framing  sonorous  periods  as  his 
boat  swayed  up  and  down  on  the  waves  of 
the  Atlantic,  while  he  was  eagerly  watch- 
ing an  opportunity  to  hook  a  large  cod  or  a 
giant  halibut.  It  is  reported  that  the  cele- 
brated passage,  which  every  school-boy  in 
the  land  knows  by  heart,  "  Venerable  men ! 
yon  have  come  down  to  us  from  a  former 
generation,"  was  both  conceived  and  audi- 
bly uttered  as  he  was  exultingly  hauling  in 
a  huge  fish;  and  the  dying  cod  or  halibut, 
however  sad  might  be  his  condition  in  re- 
spect to  a  more  important  matter  than  list- 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  53 

ening  to  eloquence,  had  at  least  the  ad  van- 
tage  of  being  the  first  living  thing  that 
heard  that  immortal  apostrophe  to  the  sur- 
vivors of  the  Revolutionary  war.  Now  such 
communion  with  nature,  both  passive  and 
active,  gave  to  Webster's  logic  and  eloquence 
an  objective  character.  The  breath  of  ihe 
pine  woods  of  NCAV  England,  the  exhilara- 
ting ocean  breeze,  in  some  mysterious  way 
stole  into  his  profoundest  arguments  ad- 
dressed to  the  Senate  or  the  Supreme 
Court,  while  his  intimate  knowledge  of  or- 
dinary men  in  their  ordinary  occupations 
recommended  what  he  said  as  conformable 
to  the  plain  good  sense  of  average  mankind. 
"He  is  one  of  our  folks,"  was  the  general 
judgment  pronounced  at  thousands  of  New 
England  village  firesides  wheu  one  of  his 
gre«at  speeches  in  the  Senate  was  read  aloud 
to  the  assembled  family  ;  and  they  thought- 
fully pondered  on  it  the  next  day,  when 
they  were  urging  reluctant  oxen  through 
miry  roads,  or  were  ploughing  their  fields. 

Now  Choate,  superior  to  Webster  in  quick- 
ness of  apprehension  and  imagination,  was 
an  in-doors  man.  The  larger  portion  of  his 
mature  life  was  passed  in  the  stifling  atmos- 
phere of  the  courts,  or  in  what  Milton  calls 
"the  still  air  of  delightful  studies;"  that  is, 


54  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

in  his  library.  He,  of  course,  was  not  so 
foolish  as  to  neglect  exercise ;  but  his  exer- 
cise was  commonly  confined  to  long  walks 
through  the  streets  or  around  the  Common 
of  Boston.  No  one  ever  enjoyed  Nature 
more  intensely;  but  he  never  sojourned 
with  her.  His  friend  Charles  G.  Lor  ing, 
one  of  his  competitors  for  the  leadership 
of  the  Suffolk  bar,  once  invited  him  to  pass 
a  summer  day  at  his  beautiful  residence  on 
the  Beverly  shore.  Mr.  Choate  was  full  of 
enthusiasm  as  he  walked  among  the  wood- 
land paths  or  gazed  at  the  varying  aspects 
of  sky  and  ocean  ;  he  doubtless  stored  up  in 
his  mind  images  of  natural  beauty  which 
flashed  out  afterward  in  many  a  popular 
speech  or  legal  argument ;  but  he  exhaust- 
ed the  capacity  of  the  place  to  feed  his  eye 
and  imagination  in  half  a  dozen  hours.  "  My 
dear  Loring,"  he  said,  in  parting, "  there  has 
not  been  a  twentieth  part  of  a  minute  since 
I  entered  this  terrestrial  paradise  that  I  have 
not  enjoyed  to  the  top  of  my  bent ;  but  let 
me  tell  you  that  should  you  confine  me  here 
for  a  week,  apart  from  my  work  and  books, 
I  know  that  I  should  die  from  utter  ennui. 
You  are  fortunate  in  being  able  serenely  to 
delight  in  it  day  after  day."  Now  this  did 
not  indicate  any  incapacity  in  Mr.  Choat-. 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  55 

to  take  into  Ms  mind  all  that  ocean  and 
woodland  scenery  suggests,  but  simply  his 
incapacity  to  dwell  long  upon  what  other 
less  active  and  restless  minds  find  to  be  a 
perpetual  source  of  tranquil  delight.  In 
the  fourth  canto  of  "Childe  Harold"  Byron 
described  in  immortal  verse  the  architecture, 
the  statues,  the  paintings,  which  make  Rome 
a  holy  city  to  the  artist  and  the  poet.  The 
stanzas  devoted  to  St.  Peter's  Church,  the 
Apollo  Belvedere,  the  Venus  de  Medici,  the 
Dying  Gladiator,  not  to  mention  others,  are 
in  the  memories  of  all  who  visit  Rome ;  still 
it  is  not  remembered  that  Byron  staid  in 
Rome  only  a  few  days,  though  in  that  brief 
period  he  did  more  than  an  ordinary  man 
of  talent  could  have  done  by  residing  there 
for  years.  Choate,  in  the  same  swift  way, 
rapidly  assiinirated  what  he  saw  in  a  nov- 
el scene,  and,  with  a  similar  restlessness 
of  brain,  hurried  away  to  some  new  expe- 
rience. He  honored  Webster  as  much  as  he 
could  honor  any  man  of  his  time ;  still,  if 
ho  had  been  asked  to  pass  a  fortnight  with 
Webster  at  Marshfield  or  at  his  New  Hamp- 
shire farm,  and  had  accompanied  him  day 
after  day  in  his  shooting  or  fishing  expedi- 
tions, not  even  Webster's  conversation  could 
have  saved  him  from  being  devoured  with  au 


50  SOME  HE  COLLECTIONS  OF 

impatient  desire  to  escape  from  the  monot- 
ony of  such  an  existence.  All  the  eccen- 
tric originals  of  the  neighborhood,  whom 
Webster  delighted  in  year  after  year,  he 
would  have  delighted  in  for  a  €lay,  and  theu 
dismissed  them  from  his  mind  as  intolerable 
bores  ;  the  mountain  or  ocean  scenery  might 
have  enthralled  him  for  a  few  days  more ; 
but  the  shooting  and  fishing,  in  which  Web- 
ster took  such  pleasure,  would  have  seemed 
to  him  a  scandalous  waste  of  time,  which 
might  have  been  more  profitably  bestowed 
on  ^Eschylus  and  Aristophanes,  on  Thucydi- 
des  and  Tacitus,  on  Hooker  and  Jeremy  Tay- 
lor, on  Bacon  and  Burke,  011  Shakespeare  and 
Milton.  By  the  necessity  of  his  mental  con- 
stitution he  could  find  no  repose  except  in 
varying  the  direction  of  his  intellectual  ac- 
tivity. The  serenity  of  mind  which  comes 
from  the  calm  contemplation  or  indolent  en- 
joyment of  nature  and  country  life  he  never 
obtained,  while  to  Webster  it  was  a  habit- 
ual mood.  Webster  had  leading  and  fixed 
ideas,  which  were  inseparable  from  his  in- 
dividuality;  through  the  mind  of  Choate  a 
throng  of  ideas  was  constantly  passing, 
pressing  and  sometimes  trampling  on  each 
other,  but  on  account  of  their  number  and 
variety  disturbing  the  process  by  which 


11UFUS  CHOATE.  57 

ideas  settle  into  convictions  and  dominate 
will.  It  is  hardly  fanciful  to  assert  that  the 
permanent  impression  which  Webster's  ideas 
and  rhetoric  left  on  the  politics  and  litera- 
ture of  the  country  were,  in  a  considerable 
measure,  due  to  his  out-of-doors  life  and  his 
talks  with  "uncultivated,"  natural  men. 

In  one  particular  Choate  excelled  Web- 
ster— that  of  constant  high-bred  courtesy 
to  meii  and  women  of  all  ranks.  While 
pouring  forth  the  treasures  of  his  mind,  he 
always  had  the  art  of  disguising  his  own  su- 
periority by  graceful  subterfuges  of  expres- 
sion, indicating  that  he  was  only  recalling 
to  the  attention  of  his  companion  things, 
events,  and  thoughts  which  were  in  the 
memory  of  both.  "  You  remember  that  fine 
passage  in  Southey ;"  "  I  need  not  remind 
you  that  Burke,  on  this  point,  says;"  "  You7 
of  course,  recollect  Cicero's  statement  as  to 
the  problem  in  question ;"  "You  have  doubt- 
less often  felt  the  force  of  De  Quincey's  re- 
mark;" "You  need  not  to  be  reminded  of 
that  grand  sentence  in  Hooker :"  such  were 
his  ordinary  ways  of  introducing  allusions 
to  authors  of  note,  whose  works  were  lodged 
as  securely  in  his  brain  as  they  were  on  the 
shelves  of  his  library ;  and  he  always  gave 
you  new  information  by  thus  amiably  inti- 


58  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

mating  that  you  were  already  in  possession 
of  it.  In  familiar  conversation  he  never  put 
on  the  airs  of  a  "  superior  intelligence ;"  he 
hixd  a  comic  dislike  of  the  grave,  portentous, 
superserviceable  Lore  who  approached  him 
•with  the  notion  that  he  was  "the  great  Mr. 
Choate;"  and  never  appeared  more  happy 
than  when  his  companions  of  a  lower  intel- 
lectual grade  thought  they  were  communi- 
cating knowledge  to  him,  though  they  were 
in  fact  receiving  it.  Such  entire  absence  of 
dogmatism  and  pretension,  such  tenderness 
for  the  feelings  and  respect  for  the  opinions 
of  others,  I  never  witnessed  in  any  other  man 
of  equal  talents  and  accomplishments.  Web- 
ster was  generally  charming  when  among 
his  intimate  friends,  and  ponderously  con- 
descending to  comparative  strangers,  if  he 
happened  to  be  in  good  health  and  spirits; 
but  in  case  he  was  sick  or  "disgruntled/'  or 
had  his  autumnal  "hay  fever,"  he  put  on  a 
boorish  "  God-Almightiness"  which  had  all 
the  offensiveness  of  dignity  without  any  of 
its- majesty,  and  made  him  personally  hate- 
ful to  many  politicians  who  were  willing  to 
admit  the  essential  grandeur  of  his  genius 
and  character.  Choate,  on  the  other  hand, 
whether  in  health  or  out  of  it,  was  always 
courteous;  and  I  do  not  believe  that  any 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  59 

man  ever  met  him  in  the  street,  in  his 
house,  or  in  his  office  without  being  im- 
pressed by  the  sweetness  and  serenity  of 
his  temper,  and  by  that  graciousness  of 
manner  which  was  the  farthest  possible 
remove  from  the  insolent  affability  charac- 
teristic of  the  eminent  "personage"  who 
condescends  to  treat  with  elaborate  polite- 
ness the  humbler  creature  whom  he  admits, 
for  the  moment,  to  be  a  human  being.  Noth- 
ing could  abate  Choate's  chivalric  courtesy, 
not  even  his  horror  of  bores.  On  one  occa- 
sion I  was  present  when  a  good  man  pro- 
pounded to  him  a  self-evident  proposition, 
and,  to  support  it,  proceeded  to  state  a  con- 
siderable number  of  irrelevant  facts,  on 
which  he  founded  a  series  of  inconclusive 
arguments.  The  thermometer  was  90°  in 
the  shade;  Choate  was  physically  exhaust- 
ed by  the  labors  of  the  forenoon,  and  re- 
quired some  more  stimulating  discourse  to 
rouse  him  iuto  attention;  but  he  listened 
patiently  to  the  end,  and  bowed  his  acqui- 
escence to  the  foregone  conclusion  arrived 
at  by  an  illogical  process.  When  the  bore 
departed,  thankful  that  he  had  deposited  an 
important  truth  which  would  bear  fruit  in 
his  listener's  mind,  Mr.  Choate  turned  to  me, 
and  remarked:  "What  an  excellent  person 


60  SOME   RECOLLECTIONS   OF 

A.  Y.  Z.  is!  but  don't  you  think  ho  would 
be  much  better  thau  he  is  if  he  could  tell  in 
a  quarter  of  half  a  minute  what  lie  has  con- 
sumed fifteen  minutes  in  telling  ?"  That  re- 
mark was  the  only  revenge  he  took  for  being 
robbed  of  his  precious  time.  Webster  would 
have  growled  the  talker  into  silence  at  the 
end  of  his  first  sentence,  or  have  contemptu- 
ously turned  on  his  heel  and  left  him  to  talk 
to  himself.  Choate  was  incapable  of  offend- 
iug  the  self-love  of  a  benevolent  egotist  by 
any  disrespect,  even  the  disrespect  of  inat- 
tention to  his  tedious  discourse.  It  is  dif- 
ficult to  determine  how  many  influential 
enemies  Webster  made  by  his  surliness,  es- 
pecially when  he  had  one  of  his  attacks  of  the 
"  hay  fever."  I  remember  one  occasion  when 
he  came  down  from  Boston  to  deliver  a  lec- 
ture 011  the  frainers  of  the  Constitution  to  a 

city  in County,  the  leading  personages 

of  which  were  disposed  to  think  of  them- 
selves as  among  the  elect,  the  elite,  perhaps 
the  effete,  of  the  earth.  In  the  anteroom  of 
the  hall  the  mayor  was  busy  in  introducing 
the  distinguished  citizens  of  the  place  to  the 
great  man,  who  had  an  ominous  thunder- 
cloud on  his  brow,  and  shook  hands  with  each 
prominent  citizen  as  he  came  forward  with  a 
savage  expression  in  his  countenance,  indi- 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  C>1 

eating  that  ho  would  rather  use  his  hands  to 
inflict  mortal  injury  011  each  of  the  persons 
who  came  forward  than  to  clasp  theirs  in  a 
spirit  of  amity  and  brotherhood.  The  cloud 
on  his  brow  grew  blacker  and  blacker,  and 
the  bolt  flashed  out  just  as  a  political  oppo- 
nent, of  the  reptile  race  of  local  politicians, 
came  cringing  and  smiling  toward  him  to 
say,  "  I  am  glad  to  see  you,  Mr.  Webster." 
Webster  contemptuously  turned  on  his  heel, 
and,  with  his  back  to  the  purring,  crawl- 
ing, poisonous  sycophant,  gruffly  exclaimed, 
"  Enough  of  this,  Mr.  Mayor ;  let  us  go  in  to 
the  hall."  Those  who  witnessed  the  rebuif 
can  never  forget  the  instant  change  in  the 
face  of  the  man  who  was  thus  disappointed 
in  having  the  honor  to  shake  hands  with  the 
"Defender  of  the  Constitution,"  the  "god- 
like Dan."  Mortification  and  rage  were 
blended  in  the  tones  with  which  he  whis- 
pered to  another  political  opponent  of  Mr. 
Webster  by  his  side :  "  Damn  him !  I  always 
said,  you  know,  that  he  was  an  enemy  to  his 
country !"  Choate  could  never,  under  any 
circumstances,  have  been  provoked  into  such 
an  incivility.  It  may  be  added  that  Web- 
ster further  expressed  his  sense  of  intoler- 
able boredom  by  saying  to  the  gentleman 
who  was  to  follow  his  speech  with  the  reci- 


62  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

tafion  of  an  original  poem,  "Are  you  famil- 
iar with  this  city?  In  my  opinion  'tis  the 
dullest  place  on  God's  earth."  It  is  plain 
that  this  is  not  the  way  by  which  a  promi- 
nent statesman  can  acquire  friends  or  con- 
ciliate enemies.  Webster  himself  could 
never  have  been  guilty  of  such  manners  to 
a  farmer,  or  fisherman,  or  body-servant ;  but 
in  his  ugly  moods  he  was  capable  of  heaping 
any  insult  on  a  politician. 

Mr.  Choate,  as  the  great  Whig  orator  of 
Boston,  -was  always  called  upon  to  address 
the  monster  meetings  of  the  Boston  Whigs 
when  an  important  election  was  pending. 
Unless  inflamed  with  the  passion  of  the 
time,  unless  the  question  up  for  settlement 
was  one  which  spontaneously  inspired  him, 
he  considered  this  demand  on  the  little  lei- 
sure which  his  professional  engagements  al- 
lowed him  as  an  intolerable  bore.  On  ous 
occasion,  when  he  was  suffering  from  one  of 
his  attacks  of  bilious  headache,  he  was  al- 
most dragged  out  of  his  bed  and  practically 
forced  to  go  down  to  Faneuil  Hall  and  make 
a  speech.  I  was  among  the  crowd,  and  no- 
ticed, as  he  pressed  through  the  seething, 
sweltering  mass  of  citizens  which  obstruct- 
ed his  way  to  his  allotted  position  on  the 
platform,  that  his  face  looked  weary  and 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  63 

Laggard,  and  that  a  strong  odor  of  camphor 
followed  him  in  his  progress;  but  I  also  no- 
ticed, as  he  passed,  that  there  was  a  humor- 
ously wicked  look  in  his  eyes,  which  indi- 
cated that  he  intended  mischief  to  the 
chairman  of  the  meeting,  who  had  invaded 
the  privacy  of  his  chamber  and  insisted  on 
his  making  a  speech  though  he  was  palpa- 
bly suffering  from  physical  pain.  My  an- 
ticipation proved  true.  Nothing  could  be 
moro  splendid  aud  inspiring  than  the  ora- 
tion as  a  whole;  but  he*  took  every  oppor- 
tunity, in  the  pauses  of  his  declamatory  ar- 
gument, to  give  a  sly  thrust  at  the  chairman. 
The  first  sentence  apprised  all  who  were  fa- 
miliar with  Choate's  moods  that  mischief 
was  brewing.  "  You,  Mr.  Chairman,"  he  be- 
gan, "  called  upon  me  last  Thursday,  and  de- 
manded that  I  should  address  the  Whigs  of 
Boston  to-night.  I  respectfully  informed 
you  that,  owing  to  ill  health  and  the  press- 
ure of  my  professional  engagements,  it  was 
utterly  impossible  for  me  to  be  present  on 
this  occasion,  and  accordingly  here  I  am" 
This  delicious  tion  sequitiir  elicited  roars  of 
laughter  and  applause  from  three  or  four 
thousand  people,  and  prepared  them  for 
what  was  to  follow.  Choate  was  deter- 
mined to  punish  the  chairman— one  of  the 


64  GOME   RECOLLECTIONS   OF 

ablest  men  of  "business  that  Boston  cvor 
produced,  but  who  knew  as  little  of  Latin 
as  of  Cherokee — for  forcing  him  into  his 
irksome  position.  With  this  end  in  view, 
he  took  a  malicious  delight  in  hurling  ev- 
ery now  and  then  at  the  chairman  long 
resounding  sentences  from  Cicero,  always 
prefacing  them  with  an  inimitable  mock  def- 
erence to  the  good  merchant  in  the  chair,  as 
though,  in  familiarity  with  Latin  learning, 
the  able  business  man  was  infinitely  supe- 
rior to  such  a  poor  scholar  as  himself.  The 
chairman  had  to  smile  blandly  and  nod  his 
head  in  approval  as  every  quotation  from 
Cicero  was  shot  at  him  in  the  most  pene- 
trating tones  of  the  orator's  magnetic  voice. 
The  mass  of  the  audience  did  not  at  tirst 
take  the  joke.  Indeed,  the  most  ignorant 
people  like  to  hear  Latin,  as  the  father  of 
Charles^iu  Fletcher's  play  of  The  Elder  Broth- 
er, liked  to  hear  Greek,  for,  he  said,  "  It  comes 
so  thundering  as  'twould  waken  devils." 
The  mere  noise  of  the  unintelligible  lan- 
guage has  an  effect  on  the  ear,  though  it 
conveys  no  sense  to  the  mind  ;  and  Choate's 
citations  from  Cicero  passed  muster  for 
about  fifteen  minutes  before  his  pushing, 
swaying,  clamorous,  and  delighted  mob  of 
auditors  became  aware  of  the  exquisite 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  65 

pleasantry  of  prefacing  every  rolling,  re- 
sounding Latin  sentence  with  such  remarks 
as  these  :  "  As  you,  Mr.  Chairman,  will  re- 
member ;"  "As  you,  Mr.  Chairman,  can  not 
forget ;"  "  As  you,  Mr.  Chairman,  must  have 
often  recalled  to  your  memory  in  the  pres- 
ent strife  of  irreconcilable  factious  in  this 
terrible  crisis  of  our  country;"  but  at  last 
the  full  malicious  fun  of  the  orator  they 
were  applauding  became  evident  to  their 
sense  of  humor.  They  knew  that  the  chair- 
man was  as  ignorant  of  the  language  of 
Cicero  as  they  were,  and  they  delighted  in 
seeing  him  helplessly  bending  under  the 
pitiless  peltings  of  this  linguistic  storm. 
The  shouts  and  acclamations  with  which 
they  welcomed  every  point  which  Mr.  Choate 
made  in  the  English  tongue  were  redoubled 
on  every  occasion  when  he  solemnly  turn- 
ed to  the  chairman  and  capped  his  climax 
in  magnificent  Ciceronian  Latin.  The  fun 
waxed  more  and  more  fast  and  furious,  and 
when  Mr.  Choate,  utterly  exhausted,  sat 
down,  it  seemed  as  if  Faneuil  Hall  would 
rock  to  its  foundations  with  the  clappings 
of  hands  and  the  stampings  of  feet.  The 
orator  who  had  raised  all  this  uproarious 
hubbub,  declining  all  compliments,  proceed- 
ed quietly  to  do  what  he  always  did  after 
D'  E 


66  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS   OF 

making  a  great  effort — that  is,  to  invest  his 
throat  and  lungs  with  voluminous  wrap- 
pings, in  order  to  protect  them  against  tlie 
night  air — and  then  stalked  out  at  a  rapid 
pace  to  the  peaceful  chamber  from  which  ho 
had  been  unwarrantably  drawn  to  serve  a 
transient  purpose  of  his  party.  The  chair- 
man of  the  meeting  doubtless  never  after- 
ward compelled  Mr.Choate  to  make  a  speech 
against  his  will,  unless  he  had  previously 
devoted  days  and  nights  to  the  study  of 
Cicero  in  Cicero's  native  tongue. 

Perhaps  the  most  notable  of  his  popular 
addresses  was  one  delivered  before  the  Dem- 
ocrats of  Lowell,  Massachusetts,  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1856,  after  he  had  concluded  to  come 
out  for  Mr.  Buchanan,  the  Democratic  can- 
didate for  the  Presidency.  There  were  four 
or  five  thousand  persons  present  eager  to 
applaud  the  great  Whig  orator,  who  had 
been  constrained  to  accept  their  candidate 
because  he  thought  the  Democratic  party 
then  stood,  more  emphatically  than  the  par- 
ty he  left,  for  "the  Union."  The  floor  of 
the  immense  hall  began  to  sink  before  the 
orator  began  to  speak.  It  sank  more  and 
more  as  he  proceeded  in  his  discourse,  and 
at  the  end  of  half  an  hour  a  sound  was  heard 
calculated  to  frighten  the  audience  into  a 


KUFUS  CHOATE.  67 

stampede  for  the  doors — a  course  which 
would  have  resulted  in  their  destruction. 
Mr.  B.  F.  Butler,  who  presided,  told  the  au- 
dience to  remain  perfectly  quiet  while  he 
went  to  discover  if  there  were  any  cause  for 
alarm.  He  discovered  that  the  condition  of 
the  supports  of  the  floor  was  such  that  the 
slightest  demonstration  of  applause  would 
be  likely  to  bring  the  floor,  the  roof,  and  the 
Avails  of  the  building  itself,  to  the  ground, 
and  bury  the  audience  in  the  ruins.  He 
calmly  returned  to  the  platform  and,  as  he 
passed  Choate,  whispered  hoarsely  in  his 

ear,  "  We  shall  all  be  in in  five  minutes." 

Then,  with  admirable  aplomb,  he  told  tho 
crowd  before  him  that  there  was  no  imme- 
diate danger  if  they  slowly  dispersed,  but 
he  considered  it  judicious  to  adjourn  the 
meeting  to  another  locality  to  hear  the  con- 
clusion of  Mr.  Choate's  speech.  The  post 
of  danger,  he  added,  was  just  under  the 
platform,  and  that  he  and  those  with  him 
on  the  platform  would  be  the  lagt  to  go  out. 
As  Choate  slowly  walked  by  the  side  of  But- 
ler in  the  rear  of  the  procession,  expecting 
every  moment  that  a  dreadful  catastrophe 
might  occur,  he  still  could  not  resist  the 
temptation  to  indulge  iii  a  bit  of  humorous 
mischief  at  the  expense  of  the  politician  and 


68  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS   OF 

lawyer  be  had  fought  for  so  many  years,  and 
whispered  to  him :  "  Brother  Butler,  when 
you  told  me  we  should  all  be  in  five  minutes 
iu  that  locality  unmentionable  to  ears  po- 
lite, did  you  have  the  slightest  idea  of  insin- 
uating that  both  of  us  would  go  to  the  same 
place  ?"  It  may,  however,  be  added  that 
Mr.  Butler  probably  saved,  by  his  admirable 
cooh:ess  in  that  hour  of  peril,  as  many  men 
as  he  was  afterward  the  instrument  of  kill- 
ing in  his  office  of  Major-General. 

Many  illustrations  might  be  cited  of  Mr. 
Choate's  insidious  power  over  a  jury,  secret 
even  to  the  twelve  who  were  to  render  the 
verdict.  One  of  these  was  furnished  by.  a 
hard-headed,  strong-hearted,  well-educated 
farmer,  who  was  one  of  a  jury  that  gave  five 
verdicts  in  succession  for  Choate's  clients. 
The  way  he  expressed  his  admiration  of  the 
great  advocate  was  peculiar.  It  was  in 
these  words:  "I  understand,  Sir,  that  you 
are  a  relative  of  Mr.  Choate.  I  must  tell 
you  that  I  did  not  think  much  of  his  flights 
of  fancy ;  but  I  considered  him  a  very  lucky 
lawyer,  for  there  was  not  one  of  those  five 
cases  that  came  before  us  where  he  wasn't 
on  the  right  side."  This  was  said  with  the 
utmost  simplicity,  and  without  the  remotest 
notVm  that  an  imaginative  mind  could  ex- 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  69 

ercise  a  subtle  effect  on  a  mind  entirely  un- 
imaginative through  that  grand  function  of 
the  imagination  by  which  the  person  who 
has  it  enters  into  the  interior  recesses  of 
natures  which  differ  fundamentally  from 
his  own,  and,  identifying  himself  for  the 
moment  with  their  individualities,  extorts 
from  them  their  well-considered  "  Yes." 

But  perhaps  a  stronger  instance  of 
Choate's  method  of  concealing  his  power  at 
the  time  he  was  exercising  it  with  the  most 
potent  effect  occurred  in  an  important  case 
where  the  evidence  was  so  conflicting  and 
the  points  of  law  so  intricate  that  dispas- 
sionate minds  might  have  long  paused  be- 
fore deciding  the  question  in  dispute.  One 
resolute  juryman  said  to  another,  as  ho  en- 
tered the  "  box,"  "  Now,  mind  you,  there  is 
one  man  in  this  crowd  who  will  not  give  a 
verdict  for  the  client  of  that  man  Choate. 
Why,  Sir,  he  is  the  great  corrupter  of  juries. 
I  know  all  his  arts.  He  is  engaged  by  fel- 
lows who  wish  to  subvert  justice  between 
man  and  man.  I  hate  him  with  my  whole 
heart  and  soul."  When  the  verdict  was  giv- 
en for  Choate's  client,  with  hardly  a  discus- 
sion in  the  jury-room,  the  wonder  was  ex- 
pressed that  this  obstinate  member  of  the 
conclave  agreed  so  readily  with  the  rest. 


70  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

"Ob,"  be  said,  "the  case  was  a  plain  one; 
Cboate  was  right  tbis  time :  and  you  know 
it  would  bave  been  scandalous  for  me  to  vio- 
late justice  because  I  bad  a  prejudice  against 
tbe  person  wbo  supported  it.  Let  him  ap- 
pear before  us  in  a  case  where  be  is  palpa- 
bly wrong,  as  in  tbe  Tirrell  trial  or  tbe  Dai- 
ton  trial,  and  I  will  show  you  that  I'm  all 
right.  He  never  can  humbug  me !" 

His  power  of  lifting,  of  idealizing  bis  cli- 
ents, of  making  them  tbe  heroes  or  heroines 
of  a  domestic  or  sensational  novel,  was  nev- 
er more  brilliantly  illustrated  than  in  the 
celebrated  Tirrell  trial,  to  which  I  have  be- 
fore alluded.  Here  were  murder  and  arson, 
committed  in  a  low  brothel,  as  the  subject 
of  the  picture  or  story;  but  a  great  artist — 
a  sort  of  Yankee  Spagnaletto  or  Victor  Hugo 
— was  suddenly  improvised  to  paint  or  nar- 
rate the  scene  and  incidents.  The  whole 
event  was  elevated  into  the  domain  of  high 
tragedy.  Those  who  listened  to  Mr.  Choate's 
argument  can  never  forget  tbe  s'trange  kind 
of  interest  with  which  he  invested  the 
wild  and  "fast"  young  man  and  his  stupid, 
drunken  harlot.  It  was  as  if  Albert  Tirrell 
and  Maria  Bickford  were  on  a  par  with 
OMiello  and  Desdemona.  Indeed,  the  advo- 
cate might  have  been  supposed  to  hold  a 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  71 

brief  from  Othello  against  a  charge  of  mur- 
dering his  wife.  There  are  certain  almost 
miraculous  effects  produced  by  the  mere 
tone  of  voice  with  which  a  great  advocate 
pronounces  the  simplest  words.  Thus  when 
Choate  said,  "Albert  loved  Maria,"  the  au- 
ditors felt  the  same  kind  of  pity  which  they 
might  have  felt  had  Garrick  or  Keau  utter- 
ed the  words,  "Othello  loved  Desdemona.'7 
It  is  considered  a  great  merit  in  an  actor's 
or  orator's  voice  if,  in  pathetic  passages,  he 
has  "  tears  in  his  tones ;"  but  Choate,  in  this 
instance,  had  in  his  tones  something  Avhich 
suggested  the  whole  sad,  horrible  incidents 
of  guilt  and  misery  which  it  was  his  task  to 
recount,  and  which  resulted  from  the  fatal 
attachment  of  "  Albert"  to  "  Maria."  There 
is  no  accurate  report  of  his  argument  in  this 
trial ;  and  indeed  if  every  word  he  spoke 
had  been  faithfully  taken  down,  still  his 
voice,  his  tones,  the  meaning  he  put  into 
his  utterance  of  some  plain  words,  could  not 
have  been  reported. 

One  incident  of  this  trial  afforded  Mr. 
Choate  an  excellent  opportunity  of  exert- 
ing his  incomparable  power  of  ridiculing 
what  he  might  find  it  difficult  to  dispose  of 
by  reasoning.  Roxbury  is  but  four  miles 
from  Boston,  and  is  now,  indeed,  incorpo- 


72  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

rated  with  the  city  proper.  After  to .3  evi- 
dence for  the  defense  was  all  in,  and  the 
arguments  were  to  begin,  the  prosecuting 
Attorney  brought  forward  a  resident  of  Rox- 
bm-y  to  give  additional  evidence  against 
Tirrell.  Choate's  method  of  demolishing 
the  effect  of  what  this  witness  had  to  say 
is  among  the  cherished  traditions  of  the 
Suffolk  bar.  J*  Where  was  this  tardy  and 
belated  witness,  that  he  comes  here  to  tell 
us  all  he  knows,  and  all  he  doesn't  know, 
forty-eight  hours  after  the  evidence  for  the 
defense  is  closed?  Ts  tije.  case  so  obscure 
that  he  never  heard  of  iLK  Was  he  ill,  or  in 
custody?  Was  he  in  Europe,  Asia,  or  Af- 
rica ?  Was  he  on  the  Red  Sea,  or  the  Yel- 
low Sea,  or  the  Black  Sea,  or  the  Mediter- 
ranean Sea? No,  gentlemen,  he  was  at 

none  of  these  places  (comparatively  easy  of 
access),  but — and  I  would  call  your  atten- 
tion, Mr.  Foreman,  to  the  fact,  and  urge  it 
upon  your  attention — he  was  at  that  more 
remote,  more  inaccessible  region,  whence  so 
few  travellers  return — Roxbury." 

One  of  the  greatest  of  Websters  argu- 
ments was  that  on  the  trial  of  the  Knapps 
for  the  murder  of  Mr.  White,  of  Salem.  It 
is  now  generally  conceded  that  as  the  law 
of  Massachusetts  stood  at  the  time  Jolm 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  73 

Frauds  Kuapp  was  illegally  convicted.  As 
far  as  the  technical  law  was  concerned,  he 
was  as  innocent  as  any  peaceful  citizen  who 
walked  the  streets  of  Salem.  His  guilt  was 
plain,  hut  he  \v»3  not  legally  guilty  ;  and  it 
was  only  hy  Wehster's  overmastering  hold 
on  the  minds  and  consciences  of  the  jury 
that  they  rendered  a  verdict  equitahly  just 
but  legally  wrong.  At  the  time  of  the 
trial  Mr.  Choate  was  a  young  lawyer,  en- 
gaged in  doing  some  minor  services  to  the 
leading  counsel  who  appeared  for  the  pros- 
ecution. Had  he  been  then  the  man  who 
saved  Tirrell  from  being  illegally  hanged, 
and  had  been  counsel  for  John  Francis 
Kuapp,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that,  with 
the  law  on  his  side,  he  would  have  been 
more  than  a  match  for  Webster.  It  is  cu- 
rious that  what  is  called  "  Lyuch  law"  is 
sometimes  conducted  under  all  the  solemn 
forms  of  regulated  courts  of  justice.  That 
it  was  not  exercised  in  the  Tirrell  case  was 
owing  to  Rufus  Choate. 

The  effect  of  Choate's  oratory  was  aid- 
ed by  the  strength  of  expression  he  could 
throw  into  his  face.  "  Why,"  said  an  old 
farmer,  listening  to  an  argument  directed 
against  his  own  interests — "  why,  that  fel- 
low can  cant  his  countenance  so  as  to  draw 


74  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

tlie  tears  out  of  your  eye;,/'  He  also  hail  :i 
singular  power  of  so  changing  the  tone  of 
his  voice  that,  in  conversing  gravely  with 
one  person,  he  could  throw  in  an  "  aside1' 
to  another  which  was  audihle  to  the  latter 
alone.  On  one  occasion  two  members  of  a 
legal  firm  called  upon  him  in  order  to  sug- 
gest the  naming  of  a  day  for  consultation 
on  an  important  case  in  which  he  was  en- 
gaged as  leading  counsel.  He  happened  at 
the  time  to  be  overwhelmed  with  business, 
and  hastily  remarked  that  the  only  hours 
he  had  to  spare  within  a  week  were  after 
live  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  of  the  ensuing 
day.  That  day  was  Sunday.  The  senior 
member  of  the  firm,  with  a  slight  Pharisaic- 
al sniff  meant  to  indicate  a  superior  scrupu- 
losity in  the  matter  of  ceremonial  piety, 
solemnly  replied  :  "Mr.  Choate,  I  have  been 
for  thirty  years  a  member  of  the  bar,  but 
my  conscience  has  forbidden  rne  ever  to 
transact  any  worldly  business  on  the  Sab- 
bath.'' Choate  himself  was  in  religious 
matters  a  Calviuist  of  the  austerest  type. 
He  gave  one  glance  at  the  reprover  of  his 
sacreligious  proposal — a  glance  which  pen- 
etrated to  the  inmost  depths  of  the  little 
pettifogging  soul  that  wriggled  plainly  to 
his  eye  under  its  mere  crust  of  religious 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  75 

formality,    and    gravely    remarked:    "You 

know,  Mr.  A ,  this  cause  is  peculiarly 

one  which  falls  under  that  class  of  cases 
somewhere,  I  think,  mentioned  in  Scripture, 
which  concerns  the  doing  of  good  on  the 
Lord's  Day ;  but  I  honor  your  scruples  so 
much  that  I  would  not  for  the  world  ask 
you  to  do  violence  to  them.1'  The  conclu- 
sion of  this  address  was  accompanied  with 
a  wave  of  his  hand  which  brought  it  for  a 
few  moments  before  his  mouth ;  and  the 
junior  partner  caught  these  words:  "He's 
an  infernal  fool ;  you  come."  How  this 
swift,  significant  command  entered  his  ears 
without  getting  into  those  of  his  senior, 
the  young  man  could  never  understand, 
as  the  three  were  only  a  few  feet  apart 
during  the  short  conference.  Meanwhile 
the  oracular  teacher  of  the  proprieties  of 
religion  moved  pompously  out  of  the  office, 
fully  impressed  with  the  idea  that  he  had 
risen  amazingly  in  the  estimation  of  the 
great  Mr.  Choate  by  his  conscientious  re- 
fusal to  perform  a  duty  of  justice  and 
mercy  011  what  Iia  erroneously  called  the 
"  Sabbath."  The  only  departure  from  lit- 
eral fact  in  the  narration  of  this  anecdote 
is  in  substituting  the  milder  adjective  cf 
"  infernal"  for  the  stronger  one  impatiently 


76  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

used  by  Mi\  Ciioatc  in  qualifying  the  noun 
"fool." 

In  alluding  to  Mr.  Choate's  imaginative 
power  of  transforming  himself  into  the  per- 
sonalities of  his  clients,  of  surveying  acts 
and  incidents  from  their  point  of  view,  I 
have  expressed  my  wonder  that  he  could 
so  quickly  relieve  himself  of  the  burden  he 
carried  when  the  cause  was  decided  against 
him.  Byron,  for  instance,  is  an  example  of 
intense  genius,  with  sensibility  so  blended 
with  imagination  that  the  type  of  human 
nature  he  adopted  as  the  tit  vehicle  for 
the  expression  of  his  ideas  on  human  life 
dominated  at  last  his  own  individuality. 
The  type  he  adopted  was  the  misanthrop- 
ical type  of  our  immensely  various  human- 
ity. He  dashed  into  it;  but  the  trouble 
witli  him  was  that  when  his  genius  got  in 
to  this  form  of  individual  character,  it 
could  not  get  out.  Honce  the  monotony 
of  his  splendid  poetry.  Shakespeare,  in  his 
drama  of  Timon  of  Athens,  went  deeper  into 
the  spiritual  sources  of  misanthropy  than 
even  Byron  did,  and  expressed  the  imagina- 
tive experience  he  gained  by  it  in  passages 
of  more  dreadful  scorn  and  hatred  of  or- 
dinary men  and  women  than  Byron  ever 
dreamed  of  uttering ;  but,  unlike  Byron,  he 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  77 

found  no  difficulty  in  escaping  from  the 
mental  mood  Avhich  engrossed  him  for  the 
time,  and  passed  on  to  enter  into  and  repro- 
duce other  forms  of  character  representing 
more  healthy  and  joyous  perceptions  of  hu- 
man life.  Now  Choate,  with  much  of  By- 
ron's intensity,  had  more  of  Shakespeare's 
comprehensiveness.  The  self-abandonment 
by  which  he  seemingly  became  a  person  en- 
tirely different  from  himself,  in  identifying 
himself  with  his  client,  was  accompanied  by 
an  admirable  power  of  self-direction,  which 
enabled  him  easily  to  escape  from  his  tran- 
sient metamorphosis.  He  could  not  only 
go  itt,  but  get  out  of,  every  individuality 
he  assumed  for  the  time.  And  this  flexi- 
bility of  mind  was  not  necessarily  a  viola- 
tion of  intellectual  conscientiousness.  It 
simply  shed  light  on  the  case  in  dispute  by 
bringing  in  individual  character  as  a  factor 
in  settling  a  complicated  case  of  right  or 
wrong.  But,  at  all  events,  Mr.  Choate  clear- 
ed his  mind  of  all  the  vexatious  of  a  jury 
trial  after  the  decision  had  been  made.  "  I 
sometimes  feel,"  he  remarked  to  a  legal 
friend,  "  when  a  case  has  gone  against  me, 
like  the  Baptist  minister  who  was  baptiz- 
ing in  winter  a  crowd  of  converts  through 
a  lartre  hole  made  in  the  ice.  One  brother 


78  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

— Jones,  I  think — disappeared  after  immer- 
sion, and  did  not  re-appear;  probably  drift- 
ed ten  or  fifteen  feet  from  the  hole,  and  was 
vainly  gasping  under  ice  as  many  inches 
thick.  After  pausing  a  few  minutes,  the 
minister  said,  'Brother  Jones  has  evidently 
gone  to  kingdom  come :  bring  on  the  next.' 
Now  I  am  not  unfeeling;  but  after  all  has 
been  done  for  a  client  that  I  could  do — and 
I  never  spared  myself  in  advocating  his 
legal  rights — the  only  thing  left  for  me  is 
to  dismiss  the  case  from  my  mind,  and  to 
say,  with  my  Baptist  brother, '  Bring  on  the 
next.' " 

That  this  habit  of  mind  was  entirely  dis- 
connected from  any  languid  abandonment 
of  the  cause  of  his  client  while  there  was 
the  slightest  hope  of  saving  him  is  humor- 
ously shown  in  a  letter  which  Professor 
Brown  publishes  in  his  biography,  relating 
to  a  cause  decided  against  his  clients  by 
the  Supreme  Court  at  Washington.  "The 
court,"  he  wrote  to  the  Washington  lawyer 
engaged  with  him  in  the  cause,  "has  lost 
its  little  wits.  Please  let  me  have — 1,  our 
brief  (for  the  law)  ;  2,  the  defendant's  brief 
(for  the  sophistry);  3,  the  opinion  (for  the 
foolishness) ;  and  never  say  die."  The  au- 
gust Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States, 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  79 

which  Choato  was  accustomed  publicly  to 
celebrate  a^  the  perfection  of  wisdom  and 
equity,  was  never  so  disrespectfully  treated 
as  in  this  deliciously  impudent  private  let- 
ter. The  humor  of  it  could  hardly  have 
been  exceeded  by  Swift,  Sterne,  or  Sydney 
Smith. 

Of  the  extravagance  of  this  humor  let  me 

give  some  instances.     Thus,  Mr.  C was 

distinguished  among  all  the  able  leaders  of 
the  Suffolk  bar  for  his  strict  attention  to 
the  interests  of  his  clients,  for  his  attend- 
ance at  a  consultation  at  the  exact  minute 
appointed,  for  the  gravity  of  his  behavior 
and  life  in  every  respect,  and  especially  for 
his  rigorous  observance  of  office  hours.  In 
fact,  he  was  the  very  incarnation  of  Boston 
respectability.  On  one  occasion,  when  he 
was  solemnly  conferring  with  the  directors 
of  a  great  corporation  on  a  pending  suit, 
Mr.  Choate  darted  into  the  room,  exclaim- 
ing :  "  Well,  Mr.  C ,  I  am  glad  to  find  yon 

in  your  office  for  once.  Do  you  know  that 
for  the  past  forty-eight  hours  I  have  hunted 
for  yon  day  and  night  through  every  the- 
atre, bar-room,  and  dancing  hall  in  Boston, 
without  getting  a  sight  of  you  ?  I  desire  a 

consultation  in  the  case  of and ; 

and  now  I  have  at  last  discovered  you,  aft- 


80  SOME   RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

er  my  long  search,  I  shall  insist  on  an  in- 
terview." The  delicious  incongruity  of  the 
charge  with  Mr.  C 's  character,  he  be- 
ing known  as  the  most  punctual,  punctil- 
ious, and  decorous  of  Boston  mankind, 
raised  a  roar  of  laughter  from  the  business 
men  present;  and  tradition  obscurely  hints 
— though  this  is  of  doubtful  authenticity — 

that  even  Mr.  C smiled. 

On  the  morning  after  Charles  Simmer's 
Fourth-of-July  oration  on  "  The  True  Grand- 
eur of  Nations,"  there  naturally  gathered  at 
his  office  in  Court  Street  a  crowd  of  ap- 
provers and  disapproves  of  his  extreme 
views  of  the  policy  and  duty  of  peace.  Pro- 
i'"ssor  Lieber,  among  others,  was  there,  and 
1  remember  the  earnestness  with  which  he 
assailed  Simmer  on  the  ground  that  his  ab- 
stract principles  degraded  from  their  in- 
trinsic dignity  all  the  great  battle-fields  of 
freedom.  Sunnier  was  evidently  annoyed, 
but  could  only  get  in  here  and  there  a  palli- 
ating word  in  the  rush  of  Lieber's  indignant 
eloquence.  "Do  you  tell  me,  my  dear  Su in- 
ner," he  shouted,  "that  I  must  give  up 
Thermopylae  and  Marathon  and  Sempach  ?" 
Then  Choate,  whose  office  was  on  the  same 
floor,-  suddenly  dashed  into  the  room,  add- 
ing :  '•  And  Waterloo !  Come,  Lieber,  to  my 


'RUFUS  CHOATE.  81 

den ;  don't  bother  Sumner  any  more.  I  have 
something  to  discuss  with  you;  and  we'll 
light  it  out,  yard-arm  to  yard-arm,  to  your 
heart's  content.  Our  dear  Charles  will  be 
sufficiently  puuished  for  his  heresies  on  mil- 
itary glory  by  less  redoubtable  antagonists 
than  you.  Come  along,  I  say."  And  he 
half  coaxed,  half  dragged,  the  impassioned 
Lieber  from  Sumner's  office  into  his  own, 
though  the  great  publicist  had  only  begun 
the  harangue  he  intended  to  address  to  his 
friend.  I  never  witnessed  a  more  comical 
scene.  Even  Sumner,  irritated  and  harass- 
ed as  he  was^  joined  in  the  general  laughter 
at  the  success  of  Choate's  flank  movement 
to  protect  him  from  the  disastrous  effects 
of  Lieber's  direct  assault. 

There  are  so  many  traditions  of  Choate's 
Avit  and  humor  that  the  task  of  selection  is 
difficult.  Thus,  on  his  first  election  to  the 
national  House  of  Representatives  he  was 
once  asked  by  a  lady  why  Mrs.  Choate  did 
not  accompany  him  to  Washington.  "  I  as- 
eure  you,  madam,"  he  replied,  "  that  I  have 
spared  no  pains  to  induce  her  to  come.  I 
have  even  offered  to  pay  half  her  expenses." 
Then  there  is  his  remark  on  John  Quiucy 
Adams's  releutlessuess  as  a  debater.  "  He 
had,"  said  Choate,  "  an  instinct  for  the  jugu- 
E  F 


82  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

lar  ami  the  carotid  artery  as  unerring  as 
that  of  any  carnivorous  animal."  Of  a  law- 
yer who  was  known  to  be  as  contentious  as 
he  was  dull-witted  lie  said,  "He's  a  bull- 
dog with  confused  ideas."  While  arguing 
a  case  he  assumed  a  position  which  appear- 
ed to  be  equitable ;  but  the  court  demanded 
that  he  should  find  a  precedent  for  it.  "I 
will  look,  your  honor,  and  endeavor  to  find  a 
precedent,  if  you  require  it,  though  it  should 
seem  to  be  a  pity  that  the  court  should  lose 
the  honor  of  being  the  first  to  establish  so 
just  a  rule."  Of  an  ugly  artist  who  had 
painted  a  portrait  of  himself  he  declared, 
as  though  he  were  paying  a  compliment  to 
the  skill  of  the  painter,  that  "  it  was  a  fla- 
grant likeness."  When  he  met  the  Rev.  Mr. 
W.  I?.  Alger,  shortly  after  the  latter  had  sent 
him  r.  copy  of  his  Poetry  of  the  East,  he  re- 
marked, with  a  felicitous  combination  of 
wit  and  wisdom  :  "  The  Orientals  seem  to  be 
amply  competent  to  metaphysics,  wonder- 
fully competent  to  poetry,  scarcely  compe- 
tent to  virtue,  utterly  incompetent  to  lib- 
erty." He  was  once  engaged  as  leading 
counsel  in  an  important  mercantile  case. 
The  jury  was  composed  mostly  of  farmers 
and  drovers  drawn  from  the  western  part 
of  Massachusetts,  and  it  was  feared  that 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  83 

they  would  hardly  be  capable  of  doing  jus- 
tice to  the  merits  of  a  complicated  commer- 
cial transaction,  the  very  phrases  and  fig- 
ures of  which  they  were  necessarily  incom- 
petent to  comprehend.  His  anxious  client, 
just  before  the  trial  began,  asked  him  what 
he  thought  would  be  the  verdict.  "Oh," 
he  replied,  "  the  law  on  our  side  is  as  strong 
as  thunder,  but" — with  a  slight  shrug  of  his 
shoulders — "what  those  bovine  and  bucol- 
ical  gentlemen  from  Berkshire  may  say,  God 
only  knows!"  It  is  my  impression,  however, 
that,  in  spite  of  the  difficulties  he  encoun- 
tered, he  won  the  verdict. 

Much  has  been  written  of  Mr.  Choate's 
handwriting.  It  was  always  the  favorite 
jest  of  the  Suffolk  bar.  A  genius  akin  to 
that  of  Young  or  Champolliou  would  be  re- 
quired to  decipher  his  briefs.  Yet,  with 
his  eye  on  his  brief,  Mr.  Choate  never  hesi- 
tated for  a  word  in  making  a  statement 
in  which  every  word  used  was  significant 
and  important.  Every  body  who  has  at- 
tended a  jury  trial  knows  that  the  best 
advocates  often  pause  in  their  exposition 
of  their  case  and  indulge  in  that  hateful 
sound  which  may  be  expressed  in  letters 
in  this  way:  "err,  err,  err."  That  sound 
tends  to  kill  the  effect  of  all  eloquence.  TO 


84  SOME   RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

be  sure,  we  are  told  that  "  to  err  is  human ;" 
but  when  an  orator  indulges  in  that  inter- 
ruption of  the  stream  of  his  talk,  we  feel,  in 
closing  the  quotation,  that  it  is  indeed  "  di- 
vine" to  "forgive."  The  short-hand  which 
Mr.  Choate  used,  though  undecipherable  by 
any  other  human  intelligence,  never  left 
him  at  a  loss  for  the  exact  word,  even  in  le- 
gal arguments  before  an  assembly  of  jurists ; 
and  he  never  "  err-err-erred." 

Mr.  George  Ticknor,  the  historian  of  Span- 
ish literature,  was  once  called  as  a  witness 
in  a  case  in  which  Mr.  Choate  was  engaged. 
After  his  examination  he  sat  by  the  side  of 
the  eminent  counsellor  within  the  bar.  He 
was  attracted  by  the  notes  which  Mr.  Choate 
had  made  of  the  evidence,  and  remarked  to 
him  that  the  handwriting  reminded  him  of 
two  autograph  letters  in  his  possession,  one 
of  Manuel  the  Great  of  Portugal  (dated  1512), 
and  another  of  Gonsalvo  de  Cordova,  the 
great  captain,  written  a  few  years  earlier. 
Nobody  who  has  looked  over  such  collec- 
tions as  those  of  Mr.  Ticknor  or  Mr.  Prescott 
can  refrain  from  feeling  a  sensation  of  won- 
der that  any  sense  can  be  elicited  from  such 
seemingly  unintelligible  scrawls.  "These 
letters,"  said  Mr.  Tickuor  to  Mr.  Choate, 
"  were  written  three  hundred  aiid  fifty  years 


HUFUS  CIIOATE.  85 

ago,  and  they  strongly  resemble  yonr  notes 
of  tlie  present  trial."  Choate,  with  that 
droll,  quizzical  expression  which  lent  such 
humor  to  his  face,  instantly  replied:  "Ke- 
,'markable  men,  no  doubt ;  they  seem  to  have 
been  much  in  advance  of  their  time."  How 
delicious  this  is !  the  quiet  assumption  that 
the  infallible  sign  of  advance  in  chirography 
is  to  make  handwriting  more  undeciphera- 
ble than  Egyptian  hieroglyphics!  It  may 
here  be  stated  that  one  of  the  most  charm- 
ing addresses  he  ever  prepared  for  lyceums 
was  a  lecture  on  the  "Romance  of  Sea." 
Those  who  heard  it  forty  years  ago  now 
speak  of  it  as  a  masterpiece  of  eloquence ; 
it  enjoyed  a  popularity  similar  to  that  of 
Wendell  Phillips's  lecture  on  "  The  Lost 
Arts :"  all  who  listened  to  it  were  clamorous 
to  see  it  in  print.  The  manuscript,  how- 
ever, was  stolen  by  some  literary  rogue, 
who  probably  conceived  he  might  make  a 
modest  yearly  income  by  delivering  it  in 
remote  country  towns  to  which  its  repu- 
tation had  not  extended.  One  can  im- 
agine his  consternation  when  he  found  that 
he  could  not  decipher  a  word  of  the  man- 
uscript; that  he  had  wickedly  come  into 
possession  of  a  treasure  belonging  to  that 
description  of  lost  property  which  is  coin- 


86  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

moiily  advertised,  as  of  no  value  except  to 
its  owner. 

It  is  sad,  in  reviewing  a  career  like  that 
of  Mr.  CLoate,  to  see  on  how  frail  a  founda- 
tion rests  the  reputation  of  a  great  lawyer 
and  advocate,  unless  he  becomes  connected 
here  and  there  with  causes  that  assume  his- 
toric importance.  Erskiuc,  a  man  whose 
natural  powers  were  much  below  Choate's, 
owes  his  eminent  position  to  his  advocacy 
of  certain  persons  who  were  in  danger  of 
being  convicted  of  high  treason  at  that  mis- 
erable period  in  English  history,  the  last 
six  years  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when 
the  administration  of  the  younger  Pitt, 
commanding  an  immense  majority  in  the 
House  of  Commons  and  the  House  of  Lords, 
seemed  bent  on  depriving  the  English  peo- 
ple of  the  right  of  free  speech,  and  of  the 
right  of  associating  to  protest  against  abuses 
in  government,  and  to  petition  for  their  ro- 
moval.  The  greatness  of  Erskine  is  due  to 
his  success  in  making  a  jury  of  twelve  men, 
as  in  his  defense  of  Hardy,  in  1794,  overturn 
the  tyrannical  projects  of  King,  Lords,  and 
Commons.  The  men  marked  out  by  tho 
ministry  to  be  hanged,  drawn,  and  quarter- 
ed for  high  treason  were  saved  by  his  skill 
and  eloquence,  and  the  liberal  principles  of 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  87 

the  English  Constitution  vindicated  against 
every  department  of  the  English  govern- 
ment, including  the  judicial.  There  is  no 
other  example  in  history  where  one  man 
has  so  influenced  twelve  other  men  as  to 
make  them  nullify  the  laws  of  a  constitu- 
tional government,  of  which  every  depart- 
ment was  against  both  him  and  them.  So 
unmistakably  was  the  popular  spirit  indi- 
cated by  juries  directed  by  Erskine,  that 
the  government  found  itself  in  the  dilemma 
of  being  compelled  to  abolish  trial  by  jury 
altogether,  or  to  abandon  its  doctrine  of  con- 
structive treason.  Erskine  thus  comes  into 
an  important  period  of  English  history  as 
an  eminent  force,  fully  equal  to  the  great 
Mr.  Pitt,  inasmuch  as  he  prevented  the  exe- 
cution of  the  worst  measures  of  the  govern- 
ment. Still,  as  a  debater  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  Erskine  made  no  figure  at  all ; 
and  the  great  majority  of  his  arguments 
at  the  bar,  however  successful  in  private 
causes,  are  forgotten. 

Now  Choate  never  had  a  similar  oppor- 
tunity to  become  historical  by  successfully 
vindicating  before  the  courts  a  precious 
principle  of  liberty  which  the  courts  were 
inclined  to  repudiate.  The  causes  in  which 
he  was  engaged  were  private,  not  public 


88  SOME  ]iKrMi.i.r.<Ti<>N>  or 

causes,  and  the  great  powers  lie  exhibited 
in  conducting  them  have  left  no  rcc.nl  in 
history  or  literature.  In  his  private  diary 
he  frequently  mentions  the  uusatisfactori- 
ness  of  all  the  fleeting  reputation  gained  by 
his  political  speeches  and  legal  arguments. 
At  one  time  he  conceived  the  idea  of  writ- 
ing a  series  of  essays,  in  which  he  could  set 
down  the  results  of  his  wide  extra-profes- 
sional reading  and  thinking.  The  volume 
was  to  be  called  The  Lawyers  Vacations. 
He  even  went  so  far  as  to  tell  his  friend 
Judge  Warren  that  he  intended  to  write 
such  a  book.  "  How  far  have  you  got  in 
it  ?v  asked  the  judge.  "Well,"  Choate  re- 
plied, "I've  got  as  far  as  the  title-page  and 
a  motto.  The  title  is  The  Lawyer's  Vacations  ; 
the  motto  I've  forgotten.  But  I  shall  show 
that  the  lawyer's  vacation  is  the  space  be- 
tween the  question  put  to  a  witness  and  his 
answer."  And,  in  fact,  such  was  hardly  an 
exaggerated  representation  of  the  vacation 
that  Choate  allowed  himself. 

But  suppose  that  some  kind  genius  at  the 
time  when  Choate  had  arrived  at  the  age  of 
forty  had  showered  upon  him  an  independ- 
ent fortune.  He  was  then  in  the  possession 
of  robust  health,  and  his  mind  was  in  the 
fullness  of  its  strength  and  fertility.  Re- 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  89 

tiriug  from  the  practice  of  the  law,  his  in- 
satiable intellectual  activity  would  have 
eonght  some  subject  or  subjects  on  which  it 
might  be  profitably  exercised.  My  impres- 
sion is  that  he  would  have  selected  a  great 
historical  epoch  in  the  Old  World,  or  per- 
haps fastened  his  attention  on  the  annals 
of  New  England.  All  his  knowledge  of 
law,  all  his  experience  at  the  bar,  all  his  ac- 
quired skill  in  analyzing  evidence,  would 
have  been  devoted  to  his  theme.  His  mas- 
terly reasoning  power,  his  capacity  for  large 
generalizations,  would  have  been  employed 
on  a  vast  multitude  of  disconnected  facts, 
which  he  would  have  investigated  with  the 
zeal  of  an  antiquary,  and  assimilated,  dis- 
posed, arid  combined  with  the  skill  of  an 
artist  and  the  sagacity  of  a  thinker.  Every 
philosophy  of  history,  from  Vico's  to  Hegel's, 
he  would  have  read  and  digested.  Being 
free  from  all  calls  upon  his  time  preferred 
by  importunate  suitors,  his  mind  would 
have  soon  gained  a  grand  repose,  without 
losing  any  of  its  healthy  vigor.  When  he 
had  obtained  all  the  materials  necessary  for 
the  foundation  of  his  history,  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  his  narrative  would  have 
possessed  an  interest  and  fascination  which 
would  charm  alike  the  scholar  and  the  or- 
E* 


90  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

clinary  reader;  for  the  whole  representa- 
tion would  be  alive.  The  individuals  and 
events  of  past  ages  would  have  been  made 
as  real  as  the  friends  we  daily  accost  in  the 
streets,  or  the  incidents  which  actually  pass 
before  our  eyes.  His  imagination  would 
have  brooded  over  his  generalized  facts, 
vitalizing  all  it  touched ;  not  a  character 
would  have  been  allowed  to  appear  on  his 
page  as  a  mere  name  ;  and  then  what  wit, 
what  humor,  what  bright  fancy,  what  in- 
genious phrases,  what  happy  epithets,  would 
have  aided  to  give  variety  to  the  generally 
sustained  march  of  the  style  !  He  would,  I 
think,  have  excelled  Prescott,  Irving,  Ban- 
croft, Palfrey,  and  Motley,  for,  without  any 
disrespect  to  those  eminent  historians,  he 
was  intrinsically  more  richly  gifted  than 
any  of  them.  But  it  was  not  allowed  to 
Mr.  Choate  to  exhibit  his  rare  faculties  ex- 
cept under  the  spur  of  continually  succeed- 
ing occasions.  As  far  as  the  literature  of 
the  country  is  concerned,  he  has  left  on  it 
no  appreciable  mark  of  his  literary  powers, 
though  in  Professor  Brown's  two  volumes 
there  will  be  found  some  splendid  speci- 
mens of  his  logic  and  rhetoric,  of  his  learn- 
ing and  his  command  of  the  resources  of 
the  English  language,  which  would  do 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  91 

credit  to  our  best  prose  writers.  It  is  the 
old  irony  of  fate.  Nature  liberally  bestowed 
on  this  man  some  of  the  finest  and  noblest 
qualities,  which  she  is  generally  so  niggard- 
ly in  intrusting  to  her  children — vivid  im- 
agination ;  vigorous  intelligence ;  quickness 
of  perception ;  capacity  for  uninterrupted, 
self-rewarding  toil ;  wit ;  humor ;  a  genial 
disposition  ;  an  intense  love  for  the  beauti- 
ful and  good ;  an  instinctive  attraction  for 
the  higher  thiugs  of  the  mind ;  a  heroic  sen- 
timent which  recognized  the  slightest  mani- 
festation of  heroism  in  the  humblest  of  man- 
kind and  womankind,  and  which  kindled 
into  rapture  when  it  contemplated  and  com- 
muned with  the  grand  heroic  spirits  which  il- 
luminate history ;  a  practical  sagacity  which 
prevented  enthusiasm  from  obscuring  the 
teachings  of  sober  judgment;  a  heart  over- 
flowing with  beneficence  and  good-will  to 
all  human  beings ;  a  brain  teeming  with  facts, 
ideas,  and  images,  incapable  of  pausing  in  its 
creative  activity,  and  finding  its  repose  only 
in  a  variation  of  the  objects  to  which  its  ac- 
tivity was  directed.  And  we  can  conceive  of 
the  old  grand  dame  muttering,  as  she  accom- 
plished her  work :  "  Well,  you  fools  have  long 
been  waiting  for  a  man  of  genius  to  offset  the 
commonplace  creatures  I  ordinarily  fashion 


92  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

to  do  their  work  in  this  miserable  world: 
here  he  is !"  Then  we  may  couceive  of  Cir- 
cumstance, the  god  of  this  lower  world, 
stepping  in  and  declaring  that  this  favor- 
ite of  Nature  shall  not  be  a  great  poet,  or  a 
great  historian,  or  a  great  political  philos- 
opher, but  shall  exercise  his  genius  on  per- 
ishable topics,  and  be  defrauded  of  his  right 
to  attain  the  permanent  fame  which  men 
less  endowed  easily  accomplish.  He  shall 
scatter  his  native  gifts  in  a  thousand  ways  ; 
delight  every  body  he  meets  in  a  chance 
conversation  with  the  abundant  wealth  of 
his  intellect  and  wit ;  thrill  popular  assem- 
blies by  occasional  orations  which  leave  no 
record  beyond  the  hour ;  captivate  senates 
with  an  eloquence  which  is  connected  with 
no  measure  he  has  himself  originated  ;  be  al- 
lowed some  few  hours  in  a  week  to  commune 
with  Greek  and  Latin  poets,  historians,  and 
philosophers,  whom  he  aches  to  emulate,  but 
whom  he  shall  have  hardly  the  leisure  to 
translate  ;  and  shall  be  compelled  to  toil  for 
his  daily  bread  in  courts  of  law,  where  his 
magnificent  abilities  shall  be  acknowledged 
and  rewarded,  but  the  results  of  which  shall 
have  no  place  on  the  memory  of  mankind. 
Such  was  Choate's  fate.  Circumstance  con- 
trolled Nature.  Every  body  who  knew  him, 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  93 

every  body  who  listened  to  him,  whether 
young  men  of  letters  or  grave  judges,  felt 
that  a  strange,  original  genius  had  somehow 
dropped  down  into  our  somewhat  prosaic 
New  England,  had  done  his  life-work  in  a 
wonderfully  meteoric  way,  and  had  vanish- 
ed from  us  suddenly,  without  leaving  on  our 
politics  or  literature  the  abiding  impression 
which  his  genius  seemed  so  capable  of  im- 
pressing on  both.  That  he  was  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  men  our  country  has  pro- 
duced is  beyond  doubt ;  but  it  is  difficult  for 
those  who  knew  him  to  convey  to  a  younger 
generation,  which  never  passed  "under  the 
wand  of  the  magician,"  the  effect  he  pro- 
duced on  their  own  minds  and  hearts. 

Mr.  Choate,  in  his  published  writings, 
suffers  much  from  the  necessary  divorce 
between  his  style  and  the  inflections  of  his 
voice.  His  Dartmouth  oration  on  Webster 
,  is  among  the  manuscripts  in  the  Boston 
Public  Library,  and  it  appears  to  the  eyo 
a  mere  chaos  of  indecipherable  words, 
sprinkled  with  semicolons  and  colons,  re- 
lieved here  and  there  by  fierce  dashes  of 
the  pen,  indicating  a  pause  between  the 
comma  and  the  semicolon.  It  contains 
also  the  longest  sentence  ever  written  by 
man  since  Cadmus  invented  letters.  His 


94  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

penmanship  was  so  bad  that,  when  he 
wrote  aii  important  note  to  Daniel  Webster, 
touching  the  refusal  of  the  Boston  city 
government  to  grant  Faneuil  Hall  for  a 
meeting  of  the  supporters  of  the  7th  of 
March  speech,  Mr.  Webster  could  not  make 
out  the  meaning  of  a  single  word.  "Tell 
Choate,"  said  Webster  to  Mr.  Harvey,  "  that 
his  handwriting  is  barbarous,  that  he  should 
go  to  a  writing-school  and  take  a  quarter's 
lessons.  He  gives  me  advice  as  to  what  it 
is  proper  for  me  to  do,  and  I  can  not  under- 
stand one  of  his  infernal  hieroglyphics." 

The  peculiarity  of  Choate's  written  style 
was  this,  that  it  required  the  inflections 
of  his  voice  to  make  it  as  clear  and  flowing 
as  it  caine  from  his  own  mind.  I  would 
venture  to  undertake  the  reading  of  the 
most  formidable  sentence  in  his  eulogy  on 
Webster,  and  by  merely  imitating  his  tones 
prove  that  the  style  was  as  lucid  and  ex- 
act as  it  was  kindling  and  expansive.  In 
view  of  the  number  of  his  adjectives  as  con- 
trasted with  the  meagreness  of  his  nouns,  it 
was  said  of  him  that  he  "  drove  a  substan- 
tive and  six."  Yet  he  put  meaning  into  ev- 
ery one  of  his  adjectives,  and  was  really  the 
least  verbose  of  impassioned  orators.  His 
epithets  always  stood  for  things,  each  ad- 


11UFUS  CHOATE.  95 

jective  describing,  qualifying,  modifying,  or 
emphasizing  the  main  idea  he  desired  to 
convey.  In  Fletcher's  "Two  Noble  Kins- 
men," Arcite  says : 

"  We  felt  our  fiery  horses 
Like  proud  seas  under  us." 

In  driving  his  perilous  team  of  "a  substan- 
tive and  six,"  Mr.  Choate  partook  in  this 
grand  elation  of  conscious  genius,  gloried 
in  urging  on  his  fiery  steeds  in  headlong 
haste  to  their  appointed  goal,  and  came  in 
at  the  end  of  the  race  flushed,  it  may  be, 
and  breathless,  but  still  victorious  over  all 
competitors.  He  never  met  at  the  bar  any 
body  who  could  match  him  in  fearlessly 
driving  that  "substantive  and  six"  in  the 
legal  "  Olympian  games."  In  his  case  Pin- 
dar directed  the  chariot  as  well  as  sung  the 
triumphs  of  the  race. 

It  is  to  be  remarked  that  Choate's  real 
emphasis  was  in  the  lower  note  of  his  flexi- 
ble voice.  His  substantive  came  in  quietly 
after  an  ascending  scale  of  adjectives,  the 
last  uttered  in  the  loudest  tone  he  could 
command.  Thus,  in  the  well-known  cari- 
cature of  his  method  in  a  supposed  legal 
controversy  as  to  whether  the  second-hand 
harness  of  his  client  was  worth  a  sixpence, 
he  is  reported  as  saying:  "To  be  sure,  gen- 


96  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

tlemen  of  the  jury,  this  was  not  a  iiaruess 
distinguishable  by  the  meretricious  gloss 
and  glitter  calculated  to  catch  the  eye  of 
the  vulgar  crowd;  but  I  will  put  it  to  you 
as  citizens  and  as  men  whether  it  wasn't 
a  safe,  SOUND,  SUBSTANTIAL,  SECOND- 
HAND harness."  The  substantive  "har- 
ness" in  this  connection  was,  as  it  were, 
dropped  in  as  a  seemingly  unimportant 
word;  but  as  he  pronounced  it,  without  any 
physical  emphasis,  it  became  all  the  more 
mentally  emphatic.  This  peculiarity  per- 
vaded all  his  spoken  eloquence ;  the  high, 
the  almost  screaming,  tone  with  which  he 
uttered  his  last  smiting  adjective  subsided 
in  a  second  to  the  deep,  intense,  quiet  ut- 
terance of  the  noun. 

I  am  strongly  tempted,  in  conclusion,  to 
imitate  one  of  his  long  sentences  in  sum- 
ming up  my  impression  of  his  intellectual 
character.  Suppose  I  put  it  in  this  way : 
"He  was  endowed  by  nature  with  a  will 
singularly  vigorous  and  a  mind  eminently 
plastic ;  and  this  combination  of  force  and 
fluency,  this  combination  by  which  self-di- 
rection is  never  lost  in  all  the  fervors  of 
seeming  self-abandonment,  the  flexible  in- 
tellect flowing  into  all  the  multitudinous 
moulds  which  the  various  exigencies  of  the 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  9~ 

case  may  demand ;  now  this,  now  that ; 
homely,  if  need  be,  clad  in  the  '  russet  gray' 
of  the  peasant,  and  anon  doffing  the  impe- 
rial robes  and  putting  on  the  regal  crown; 
every  where  and  in  every  situation  equal — 
just  equal — to  the  claims  of  the  occasion ; 
never  faltering  in  any  of  the  Protean  shapes 
it  pleased  him  to  assume,  but  always  strong, 
always  earnest,  always  determined  to  carry 
to  its  ultimate  the  uppermost  conception 
glowing  in  his  ever-fertile  brain  ;  now  jest- 
ing, now  reasoning,  but,  whether  jesting  or 
reasoning,  never  losing  sight  of  his  purpose 
to  persuade,  to  convince,  to  overpower,  the 
persons  he  was  to  influence  ;  contracting  or 
expanding  his  mind  with  equal  ease,  so  that 
it  resembled  the  fabled  tent  of  the  Oriental 
prince,  which  might  be  so  condensed  as  to 
become  a  mere  toy  for  a  lady's  finger,  and 
then  again  so  spread  out  that  armies  might 
repose  under  its  grateful  shade  :  gifted  with 
\yit,  humor,  fancy,  imagination,  passion,  un- 
derstanding ;  immensely  acquisitive  as  well 
as  inquisitive  of  knowledge ;  tireless  in  in- 
dustry, so  that  it  could  be  said  of  him,  as 
Coke  said  of  Raleigh,  that  he  could  'toil 
terribly ;'  facing  the  most  abstruse  problems 
of  law  with  an  intrepidity  of  intellect  which 
no  difficulties  could  daunt  and  no  obscurity 
G 


98  SOME  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 

perplex;  fearless  in  grappling  with  opposi- 
tion, whether  the  opposition  came  in  tho 
substance  of  a  man  or  in  the  spectre  of  an 
idea ;  so  imperturbably  serene  at  the  cen- 
tre of  his  being  that  in  the  very  tempest 
and  whirlwind  of  his  eloquence  he  never 
lost  the  admirable  poise  of  his  nature,  nor 
the  fine  discretion  which  makes  eloquence 
efficient  for  its  intended  purpose  :  this  man 
stands  before  us  a  wonderful  example  of  tho 
impulses  and  capacities  of  genius — of  genius 
ever  attended  by  that  reason  which  looks 
before  and  after,  by  that  learning  without 
which  reasoning  is  but  an  idle  exercise,  an 
abundant  agitation  of  wit  on  matter  so  slight 
as  to  do  no  justice  to  the  powers  it  so  sparse.- 
ly  feeds  with  facts— facts  without  which  the 
logic  of  Aristotle  himself  would  be  but  an 
ingenious  delusion  and  a  pleasing  snare, 
something  that  the  poet  has  indicated  in 
that  fine  line, 

'  Ne  subtler  web  Aracbne  can  not  spin  ;' — 

and,  yet  more,  with  Reason  and  Learning 
having  for  their  constant  companion  Imag- 
ination, with  l  his  garland  and  singing  robes 
about  him/  decorating,  enlivening,  pene- 
trating, vitalizing,  the  argument  and  tho 
facts  so  that  the  logic  becomes  as  beautiful 


RUFUS  CHOATE.  99 

as  l  a  goklen  exhalation  of  the  dawn,'  and 
we  watch  its  processes  as  we  would  that  of 
an  army  marching  to  assured  victory  with 
all  its  hanners  flaming  in  the  consenting  and 
joyous  air;  with  all  these  powers  working 
in  glad  harmony  together,  each  assisting  the 
other,  each  knowing  its  place,  each  instinct- 
ively conscious  when  it  should  be  master  or 
servant,  and  each  seemingly  unfettered  in 
its  own  spontaneous  movement ;  to  all  these 
powers  and  accomplishments,  I  say,  he  add- 
ed the  great  tidal  wave  of  passion,  impel- 
ling, hurrying,  every  thing  onward  that  it 
caught  in  its  tyrannous  sweep,  and  leaving 
hut  wrecks  on  the  opposing  shore,  where  it 
broke  in  iridescent  spray  and  foam." 

This  is,  of  course,  little  better  than  a  car- 
icature of  the  way  in  which  Mr.  Choate 
grappled  with  the  difficulties  of  the  long 
sentence — the  sentence  of  Hooker,  Milton, 
Clarendon,  and  De  Quiucey ;  but  still,  if  it 
were  read  by  any  body  who  could  imitate 
the  inflections  of  Mr.  Choate's  voice,  and 
thus  indicate  the  natural  way  in  which  ev- 
ery stated  thought  or  fact  suggests  some- 
thing which  modifies  or  enforces  it,  and  the 
accumulating  process  goes  on  to  the  point 
where  it  rhythmically  closes,  I  think  my 
feeble  imitation  would  present  little  to  puz- 


100    RECOLLECTIONS  OF  HUFFS  CHOATE. 

zlc  the  grammarian  or  perplex  the  minds 
of  ordinary  men.  The  fact  that  juries  and 
popular  audiences  had  no  trouble  in  getting 
at  his  meaning  proves  that  his  long  sen- 
tences were  lucid,  however  obscure  they 
may  appear  to  the  eye  as  read  in  the  man- 
gled reproductions  of  reporters.  Oh,  if  the 
inflections  of  his  voice  could  be  printed ! 
Then  it  would  be  shown  that  the  soul  of 
,  the  man  threaded  every  intricacy  of  the 
complicated  sentence,  delicately  noting  each 
variation  of  the  dominant  thought,  and  vi- 
talizing the  whole  with  its  kindling  inspi- 
ration. I  have  listened  to  some  of  the 
arguments  and  addresses  in  which  he  ex- 
hibited this  mastery  of  the  resources  of 
the  English  language,  making  words  his 
'•'servile  instruments/'  and  forcing  every 
thing  to  bend  to  his  will — syntax,  it  may 
be  said,  among  the  rest — when  he  inevita- 
bly brought  to  my  mind  the  glorious  image 
in  which  Charles  Lamb  celebrates  the  ris- 
ing of  the  sun : 

"To  see  the  sun  to  bed,  and  to  arise, 
Like  some  hot  amorist,  with  glowing  eyes, 
Bursting  the  lazy  bonds  of  sleep  that  bound  him, 
With  all  his  fires  and  travelling  glories  round  him." 


RUFUS    CHOATE. 


BORN  the  1st  of  October,  1799;  graduated 
at  Dartmouth,  1819;  matriculated  in  the  Law 
School  at  Cambridge ;  and,  having  gone  to  Wash- 
ington, entered  the  law  office  of  William  Wirt, 
Attorney-General  of  the  United  States,  in  1821 ; 
admitted  to  the  Massachusetts  Court  of  Common 
Pleas  in  1823 ;  removed  to  Danvers  and  Salem, 
Mass.,  and  in  1830,  having  been  nominated  by 
the  National  Republicans,  elected  to  Congress ; 
re-elected  in  1833 ;  resigned  his  place  in  Con- 
gress and  moved  to  Boston  in  1835  ;  upon  Daniel 
Webster  accepting  the  office  of  Secretary  of 
State,  elected  Senator  to  fill  Webster's  place,  in 
1841 ;  he  followed  for  the  next  eighteen  years  a 
life  given  to  law  cases  of  importance  and  the 
preparation  of  political  speeches  and  literary  ad- 
dresses, all  interrupted  by  a  summer  vacation  in 
Europe;  failing  health  caused  him  to  sail  a 
second  time  for  England,  but  he  disembarked  at 
Halifax,  where  he  died  on  the  10th  of  July, 
1859. 


NOTES. 


Page  18,  L  7.     TIRRELL  TRIAL.     See  page  70. 

Page  24,  7.  2.  A  CAMPAIGN  APPEAL.  In  1844, 
in  this  political  contest,  the  annexation  of  Texas 
was  the  leading  issue.  James  K.  Polk,  of  Ten- 
nessee, was  favorable  to  the  measure,  and  won 
the  nomination  over  Van  Buren.  Henry  Clay 
was  the  candidate  of  the  Whigs. 

Page  25, 1.  8.  SDMNER'S  FIRST  ELECTION  TO  THE 
SENATE.  Webster  entered  the  Cabinet  as  Secre- 
rctary  of  State  in  1850.  Charles  Sumner  was  nom- 
inated to  fill  the  vacancy  by  a  coalition  of  Free- 
soilers  and  Democrats.  He  gained  the  election 
after  a  protracted  struggle  which  attracted  much 
attention,  and  the  successful  issue  of  which  was 
celebrated  by  the  anti-slavery  party. 

Page  31,  L  4.  "  WHO  OPPOSED  His  OPINIONS." 
See  speech  by  Choate  on  "American  National- 
ity," delivered  in  Boston,  before  the  Democratic 
Club,  the  5th  of  July,  1858. 

Page  37,  /.  5.  IMMORTALIZED  BY  SCOTT.  In 
Redgauntlet. 

Page  46, 1.  5.  WHAT  COULD  BE  DONE  IN  EVAD- 
ING. Choate  answered :  "  I  insist  upon  my  right 
to  explain  what  I  did  say  in  my  own  words." 

Page  50, 1. 10.    Choate  appeared  for  the  heirs, 


NOTES.  103 

"Webster  for  the  executors.  In  1847  Oliver  Smith, 
a  bachelor,  died,  and  left  an  estate  inventoried 
at  $370,000,  which  he  disposed  of  to  a  number 
of  charities. 

Page  51, 1.  19.  SPEECH  ON  THE  7in  OF  MARCH, 
in  which  Webster  justified  the  fugitive  slave  law. 
Through  this  speech  he  lost  his  chances  of  the 
Presidential  nomination,  to  which  he  was  look- 
ing, as  well  as  the  popular  favor  of  New  Eng- 
land. 

Page  70, 1.  18.  SPACNOLETTO.  A  common  name 
for  Jose  Ribera  (1588-1656),  of  the  school  of 
Oaravaggio.  His  style  is  marked  by  great  force 
and  predominating  shadow?.  He  delighted  in 
subjects  of  horror. 

Page  80,  I.  15.  PROFESSOR  LIEBER.  Francis 
Lieber  (1800-1872)  served  under  Marshal  Blii- 
cher  at  Waterloo.  He  took  part  in  the  struggle 
for  the  independence  of  Greece,  and  afterwards 
served  as  tutor  in  the  family  of  Niebuhr,  who 
was  Prussian  ambassador  at  Rome.  Upon  his 
return  to  Berlin  he  was  arrested  on  trumped-up 
charges  of  enmity  to  the  Government.  He  finally 
came  to  the  United  States  and  was  naturalized. 
He  lived  in  Boston  and  New  York,  engaged  in 
literary  work,  and  finally  went  to  South  Caro- 
lina College,  where  he  wrote  his  Manual  of  Polit- 
ical Ethics,  Legal  and  Political  Hermeneutics^  and 
Civil  Liberty  and  Self  Government. 

Page  83,  "l.  18.  YOUNG  or  CHAMPOLLION.  Dis- 
tinguished Egyptologists  who  interpreted  the  Ro- 
setta  stone. 


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